I read quite a bit growing up, including the classics and such, but the big stories I remember in my pre-teens were various Redwall books, many books by Lloyd Alexander (most prominently the Chronicles of Prydain) and the first series of books that Suzanne Collins published, The Underland Chronicles. The Underland Chronicles is significantly better than Hunger Games in my opinion, I have no clue why it is completely forgotten and people remember Hunger Games instead. Maybe because the central character is a girl in Hunger Games and a boy is the main character in Underland Chronicles.
Even though it has been near-decades since I have read some of the above stories, I still remember the central themes of Taran Wanderer, the 4th book in the 5-book series Chronicles of Prydain. The premise is Taran having a crisis where he no longer believes in himself and he thinks that he has to be born noble to become High King and marry Princess Eilonwy. The entire story revolves around him learning from various people over a long journey that what he does is what matters, not who his parents were. That journey eventually of course climaxes in the realization that he can seize control over his destiny and accept responsibility for what he can and wants to become, and it is not a birthright that can give him permission to become the man he wants to be. The other stories I listed above have similar themes and revelations, and those are the sorts of stories that can have lifetime impacts on children and adolescents.
Humans are fundamentally story-tellers. Stories, real or not, are very important to both the culture and morality of a people. We use stories to communicate fundamental ideas, especially to the younger generations. Often those stories are fictional/mythical to help separate comparisons to real life events, so we can focus more on the themes, ideas, and choices and consequences of a character. I am an analytical person so I enjoy reading philosophy and such, but often teaching important 'grounded' ideas in philosophy, like morality, being and the Self, are best taught not through direct instruction, but through stories that illustrate examples. Readers/listeners will absorb these stories and assimilate the concepts unconsciously.
Teaching the younger generation with direct examples (ie YOU personally should do this in your life) isn't always as effective as a story of a person going through events in life that can apply similar ideas and growth onto real life. This is why cultures all across the world at all times always had tales of growing up and 'the hero's journey' like stories. I know there is plenty to criticize with Joseph Campbell and the idea of the monomyth, but Joseph Campbell's absolutely got it right with in my opinion. Cultures across the globe have used stories to perpetuate not only their unique cultural ideas, but also to instill in successive generations values and beliefs that are too be valued. This was a tradition that existed for all of Mankind up until the past century, where it was completely destroyed by cultural vandals.
All of that to say that humans generally need, to borrow a phrase from LotR, 'Tales that really mattered'. Without those, you can miss important life lessons that can be illustrated through the use of those stories.
Due to a combination of malice, ignorance, and 'enlightened' new ideas of teaching, an entire generation of men (and women) in The West were completely without those 'tales that really mattered'. The entire storytelling history of The West was completely abandoned by the Elites, and this was one of the things that I believe led to such a total failure of culture during the latter half of the 20th century, along with a complete collapse of morals and ideas. This was somewhat stymied by a few specific cultural touchstones, namely media properties like Star Wars, the major comic book publishers, and the very rare book exceptions like LotR. I always wondered why boomers especially seemed to be so livid at the sequal trilogy for Star Wars and the subsequent destruction of the franchise, and were so enamored with comic books and the Marvel films. I realized the reason for this was for that generation, Star Wars and films like it WERE the 'tales that really mattered.' The millennials who were so enamored with comic book movies the past few decades were so enamored with effectively childhood entertainment, because when they were going through adolescense they didn't have those things in books or movies at the time, since Hollywood was largely focused on highschool sex comedies and such. Hardly stories about heroism and Maturing into adulthood. This is why they were/are so obsessed with Marvel films, because they are having a delayed appreciation for those adolescent stories.
