A book from my childhood

There was one particular book I would not stop reading as a kid - Mick Harte Was Here, by Barbara Park - and when I look back on it, it's sort of weird and morbid that the book I read over and over again was a book about death. A short, middle grade book about a girl whose brother dies in a bicycle accident when they're in middle school. I just reread it last night, and I realize now that one of the reasons I probably loved it so much is the voice. It feels like a friend talking to you, like someone you know and care about, so you want to hear their story, however sad it may be.

But when I was doing an assignment recently for class, I ended up writing about how I often felt creatively cursed by my relatively easy childhood, because I didn't have some huge catastrophe or deeply emotional experience I could call upon as a muse when writing. Only now am I realizing that I probably wrote about death so much in my stories because, for such a long time (truly a blessing), no one close to me had passed away. I was scared of when it would happen, because I'd had no experience with it, so I explored it through writing. And books, I'm realizing - I was drawn to Mick Harte Was Here because it explained how someone dealt with death, one kid to another.

So I'm wondering, has this happened for anyone else? Have you found yourself zeroing in on certain topics or themes in your writing and the books you read because a specific relation they have to your life - even without you realizing it?

And if you can get your hands on that book, I recommend reading it - it's a quick read and full of heart, even so many years later.