I agree. King even kind of invented his own kind of horror literature. He is an expert at turning the most reassuring, mundane or iconic aspects of modern American life to horror, or at pushing social issues to extremes (such as he did in Carrie with religious fundamentalism driven to sheer madness, and aspects of American college/high school life - like the segregation and bullying someone like Carrie would suffer from). With King, modern appliances, pets, toys, cars, baseball, children, fandom, family life, urban legends etc. He created a kind of horror mythology of American (well, East Coast) daily life. All can turn against you, not to mention his more social aspects as in many of his books, American way of life, recent history, ways of thinking and behaving play a huge role for the good, the bad or the plain ugly. He has many flaws as a writer, but he's always been a master at scratching the surface of American life to find material to turn to horror, and to make it work precisely because it's all elements, stories, characters, situations that are extremely close to the readers, often set on an endearing and generally well told background of mundane, endearing reality.

"It" scared the hell of of me as a kid (I read most of the King books I've read between 12 and 15). You must already know this, but it's a good thing you've never finished it - as often with King, the ending didn't live up to the rest of the book, and with this one it was especially disastrous. One recurrent flaw with King is that he is often at loss when judging how much he should explain and how much he should leave open and mysterious. "It" would have been all the more effective if he never gave an answer for what happened. But he did, and the answer was book-destroying.



That's the US, not Europe . A lot was left, and is still left, to the parents. Mentalities are so spread over the spectrum from extreme conservatism/puritanism to very liberal and everything in between, and all mixed with religious and moral beliefs that also vary a lot, that's it's always fairly difficult to reach the sort of social consensus found in more homogenous societies, which the Americans often deal with by making issues dealt with by governments elsewhere (in the school system etc.) strictly for individuals to deal with as part of family life.