Originally, I wanted to write this article because of a book read to me when I was a child called Love You Forever, about a mom who rocks her son to sleep every night of his life.
And I mean every night. When he’s middle aged, she drives to his house while he’s sleeping, climbs through his bedroom window with a ladder, picks him up and rocks him in her lap. I’m assuming he never marries, because, well, let’s not kid ourselves.
Then when his mom is old and bedridden, he returns the favor by rocking her in his lap and screaming “YOU MADE ME THIS WAY!” Sure, the message was one of a mother’s undying love, but as a child all I understood was “Mommy is a crazy stalker, and one day she’ll die.”
But even that macabre tale of parental breaking and entering was swiftly booted off the list by these 10 atrocities. Brace yourselves; we’re talking Giving Tree levels of disturbing here.
The Screwed Up-edness:
As all Westerners know, exactly one important thing happened in Hiroshima. And yes, this book for kindergartners is about that. According to the author, the book is based on a true account of a woman leading her child out of the A-Bomb’s blast radius while carrying her wounded husband on her back. According to the picture on the cover, it’s about women running topless through a sea of blood.
What Were They Thinking?
“Too long have the people of our country felt bewildered sorrow whenever they think of Hiroshima. We must help the new generation come to terms with an event that is, like it or not, a part of our history.”
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“Men from the sky can kill us, our friends and our family at any time. Also, fuck America.”
The Screwed Up-edness:
If you’re not already convinced this book was a terrible idea, try reciting the title at a cocktail party and see if you don’t get beat down. And while the book’s answer to the question is actually “we should ALL care about disabled people,” the people it considers “disabled” include fat kids, kids who huff paint, alcoholics, athletes and child prodigies (you know, because they’re so lonely). Maybe I’m not as tolerant as I could be, but the day I see a drunken, paint-huffing basketball prodigy park in a handicapped spot is the day I get arrested for vehicular manslaughter.
What Were They Thinking?
“If kids learn to see that everyone has their own unique imperfections, they will realize that intolerance harms us all.”
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“Great, I’m surrounded by cripples. And you can get high by huffing paint? Who knew? Me, now. Awesome.”
The Screwed Up-edness:
I find it really hard to believe that an alcoholic father would buy this book for their own child, and we can assume if he found the mother reading it he’d smack her one. So who exactly is this book for? My theory is that it was written so kids with a functional family can learn that there really are monsters in the world, and sometimes they look like daddy. Because, yeah, you’re never too young to get that little life lesson out of the way.
What Were They Thinking?
The author’s other books—gems like My Big Sister Takes Drugs, Nobody Wants a Nuclear War, My Two Uncles and When Eric’s Mom Fought Cancer—suggest that she thinks any traumatizing event in a child’s life can be cured with about 12 watercolors and 150 words.
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“I wish Daddy didn’t drink so much, and this book helpfully reminded me of that fact in public when the teacher read it to us. Now I also wish that I hadn’t cried and wet myself in front of all of my classmates.”
The Screwed Up-edness:
This is the book the movie The Labyrinth was loosely based on, so you know it’s going to be pretty horrifying. And where the movie had a young girl battle self-decapitating monsters to win her kidnapped brother back from David Bowie’s enchanted crotch-pouch, the book has her doing… basically the same thing, but then she makes all the goblins kill themselves by dancing until they collapse due to fatal exhaustion. Many other details were altered, but thankfully the movie stayed true to the simple, heartwarming story presented in the book: young girl hates baby brother, wishes him away and must slaughter a goblin army to win him back.
What Were They Thinking?
“Children are often jealous of the attention lavished on younger siblings. They should know that this is normal, and that their parents love them both equally.”
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“I am often jealous of the attention lavished on my younger sibling. It’s good to know that goblins will gladly take them if I ask.”
The Screwed Up-edness:
A parody of “This is the house that Jack built,” this book takes children on a magical, whirlwind tour of things they have no reason to want to know about: from the workers toiling in Colombian fields to the pushers on the street corner to the homeless crackheads auctioning off their orifices for that next sweet hit. It’s like the film New Jack City crossed with an episode of The Magic School Bus. Read this one to your kids at bedtime, and they’ll never look at Pixy Stix the same way again.
What Were They Thinking?
“The earlier kids learn about the evils of drugs, the better chance they stand of avoiding them.”
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“That crack dealer lives in a GIANT MANSION! Screw fireman; I want to be a dealer when I grow up!”
The Screwed Up-edness:
Ever wonder what someone with bipolar disorder looks and sounds like to their children? The answer is as upsetting as you’d imagine, and thanks to this book you don’t even have to develop a mental disorder of your own to let your kids know the depression and terror of that experience. Annie’s (single) mommy behaves like a coke fiend on one page and Debbie Downer on the next. Thankfully, Annie’s grandmother calls her on the phone to help talk her through things, and Annie learns a valuable lesson: her grandmother doesn’t love her enough to save her from her crazy mother.
What Were They Thinking?
“Mental illness in a parent is heartbreaking, and children need to know that it’s not their fault and that they can turn to friends and family for support.”
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“No matter how normal our parents seem, they could easily snap at any moment and try to drown us in a bathtub.” Actually, pretty solid advice; probably saved some lives.
The Screwed Up-edness:
This German collection of children’s stories has the double distinction of being the only book on this list to feature an abomination of nature on its cover, while also being the only book on this list that’s Nazi propaganda against the Jews. Whimsical tales like “The Poisonous Serpent,” “The Tapeworm” and “The Filthy Jew” help teach Nazi Youth a host of valuable lessons. OK, really just one lesson. Seriously, this is the written equivalent of Joe Camel, assuming he’s beating a gypsy with a bag full of candy-coated plutonium Tootsie-Pops.
What Were They Thinking?
Well, to quote directly from the source, probably something along the lines of “Just like the bacterium, the Jews bring plague and decline to the peoples they infect by race mixing and infecting Gentile peoples with Jewish thinking. They maintain, for example, that all humans are equal. But that is not true. It is a terrible lie! … said the happy flower to the sad old snail.”
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“Heil Hitler!”
The Screwed Up-edness:
At first, this book seems like a fun read. After all, drawings of horses smoking cigarettes and struggling to drink booze with their gigantic hooves are inherently hilarious. Unfortunately, the author couldn’t just leave it at that. No, she had to make the three main characters black horses names Latawnya, Latoya and Daisy, and the villainous drug pushers four white horses. And voila! In one simple move, she’s turned what could have been an excellent desk calendar into an idiotic oversimplification of race relations. Tack on a horse overdosing near the end and you’ve got yourself one of the worst books ever made, children’s or otherwise.
What Were They Thinking?
“No one will listen to my theories about the White Man pushing drugs on our brothers and sisters! Perhaps if I thinly veil them and target kids…”
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“Horses are silly. Why… why isn’t Daisy getting up, Mommy? Mommy?!”
The Screwed Up-edness:
This one’s almost cheating, since it was written more than 100-years ago and was probably meant as a satire of the Grimm fairy tales. Nevertheless, its misleading title, saccharine-sweet rhymes and 2002 re-release with new artwork by renowned illustrator Edward Gorey leave little doubt that somewhere, a young child is reading poems about “Jim, Who ran away from his Nurse and was eaten by a Lion” and “Matilda, Who told lies and was Burned to Death.”
What Were They Thinking?
Since Gorey also wrote and illustrated The Gashlycrumb Tinies, a children’s picture book of children dying in various horrific (and alphabetized) ways, I’ve got to assume he probably knew exactly what he was doing.
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“You know, I haven’t shit myself in a few years, but I’m thinking of taking it up again.”
The Screwed Up-edness:
Take every author on this list, put them in a room together, fill that room with a gas that makes people retarded, and promise to kill their families if they don’t write the worst children’s book of all time, and I guarantee they will produce Alfie’s Home. It’s not JUST that the book tells the story of a child getting molested by his uncle while his angry parents ignore him. It’s not JUST that the word “faggot” is emblazoned on page nine. It’s not JUST that the rudimentary artwork makes the picture of the “proper manifestation of a father’s love” look like Alfie’s getting molested all over again.
It’s all those things, but it’s mostly the fact that after 16 pages of the most fucked up childhood this side of Michael Jackson’s, Alfie has a single meeting with a counselor, and everything’s immediately fine. His uncle apologizes, his parents make up, he realizes he isn’t gay after all (Oh thank Christ!), rainbows shoot out of his ass, the whole bit. It’s like if Requiem For a Dream ended with a big tea party/dance number.
What Were They Thinking?
Not much.
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“Wow, this is shit. I’m going to go watch Pokémon.”
You can also follow him on Twitter! And this is likely the last time he’ll remind you, so get on that shit.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Bizarre, Children, Disturbing, Drugs, Nazis, Weird, books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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November 19th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Perhaps I’d have to read it in context… maybe not
But I don’t know how I feel about mother’s and father’s love depicted in these photos
November 16th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Cautionary Tales For Children has some of my favorite poems and you missed the point of i’ll love you forever which i understood at 3
November 16th, 2009 at 11:22 am
LOLS!!! Wow, I’ve not read any of these but I HAVE read “I Love You Forever” and boy is that one depressing!
I am NEVER going to read that to my child, EVER, and I probably am not going to let him/her see any of these either.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:17 am
What about “Der Struuwelpeter”?
November 11th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
I use two of these books in my reading library with high school students and they love them. The first is Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry and the House that Crack Built. When I discuss individually with students the message of The House that Crack Built they explain that it tells how crack cocaine gets to their communities and who benefits. It is an extremely valuable book. Somtimes My Mommy gets angry has been stolen three times due to it’s accurate portrayal of mental disease. Students love it and relate to it. Glad I teach in a district that does not censor books.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:46 am
Thank god i’m not gay!
October 27th, 2009 at 10:00 am
@elkaiser: …Hey, that book about the rats sounds interesting! Anyways. Why yeah, german kids do (have to) read that shit when they’re young. At least I did (had to…). I thought for example Struwwelpeter was pretty random and ew, so I didn’t really care that much about it and did never, ever, read it again. …I now begin to think that that was a great idea.
@Topic: Great article, I loved it. One of my favs here! …Altough there are many more traumatizing books for children out there.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Struwwelpeter is really fucking scary. I was traumatized for life after reading it when i was kid.
I also remember reading a book about some 15 rats and one of each rats died of many different ways at every page. EVERY FUCKING PAGE.
Both these books were german. Seriously, is this what german kids read when they’re young?
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:42 am
This should be a top 20 since there a whole bunch more of traumatizing books for children.
October 13th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
heh…judith vigna
October 11th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
If you look up Alfie’s Home on Bing the first site you get is Amzon selling the book and it says People who bought this book also bought these: And then it has pictures of most of the other books on this list. Did people read this & think “Hm, I’d sure like to traumati- I mean, teach my kids important lessons. Lets buy ALL OF EM!!” Sick fucks.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
i
love
this.
thank you.
i, too, find Love You Forever to be disturbing and depressing and had it been gifted to me as an impressionable, sensitive, literature-loving child, I think it might have caused the same jaw-dropping, gasp-inducing horror that my first viewing of Bambi produced. Some things are just not suitable for children under the age of 21 - at least before one has a firm grasp of the concept of irony or has learned how to laugh at the things which would otherwise make a person cry.
afffectionately yours,
anne marie
October 9th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
“I was given a book at age six. Entitled “Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes”, the book contained over one hndred and fifty pages of stuff like : “William, with a thirst for gore, nailed his sister to the door.
Mother said, with humor quaint: ‘Careful Will, don’t mar the paint!’”
And cartoons with even more macabre themes. Shit maybe you can still find it at your local bookstore. Hell yes, I was traumatized, but how much trauma did I go through compared with some kid that wasn’t even taught to read?”
I love that book. I sort of grew up with it and I wasn’t tramautised. Some of them were actually kind of funny. > >
The book’s really hard to find now. The copies I’ve seen are expensive. At least 5o.oo for one.
October 7th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
That last book, Alfie’s home, is pretty disgraceful. Rape isn’t a subject that we need to teach young children about.
October 6th, 2009 at 10:22 am
I kinda want to find #2 and read it…does that make me a bad person?
October 5th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
I was sure #3 was “Latawnya, The Naughty Nurse,…” Now that’d be one hell of an excitingly traumatic kiddy book!
October 5th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
And i think the last one is the most disturbing… besides my two uncles, iwanna read that one
October 4th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
AHAHAHAHAHA OMG THIS IS FUCKING HILARIOUS XDXDXDXD
October 4th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Okay, so my spelling and punctuation skills are a little off, but at least I’m literate. ;0)
October 4th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I was given a book at age six. Entitled “Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes”, the book contained over one hndred and fifty pages of stuff like : “William, with a thirst for gore, nailed his sister to the door.
Mother said, with humor quaint: ‘Careful Will, don’t mar the paint!’”
And cartoons with even more macabre themes. Shit maybe you can still find it at your local bookstore. Hell yes, I was traumatized, but how much trauma did I go through compared with some kid that wasn’t even taught to read?
October 4th, 2009 at 10:39 am
To be fair: Kids who have nasty situations at home can get a lot from books like “I wish Daddy Didn’t Drink so Much.” Kids have alcoholic parents, abusive parents, mentally ill parents, dead and dying parents, and parents who just up and left them. Literature that addresses these things can help these kids. First and foremost it tells them they aren’t alone, and other kids have had these awful things happen to them and survived. If I ran a shelter for abused women, or was a foster parent or a child counselor, these are exactly the kinds of books I would have for them. The “issue books” are going to help a lot more than reading about sunny kids in Leave it to Beaver realities.
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:43 am
Cautionary Tales FTW!
I actually had a compilation called Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls. I loved that book to death.
I particularly enjoyed one poem that went,
Mamie, in a manner placid
Fed the cat boracic acid.
Whereupon the cat grew frantic
Executing many an antic.
“Aha!” cried Mamie, overjoyed,
“Pussy is an alkaloid!”
I grew up okay… I think…
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:38 am
I have the The Gashlycrumb Tinies and it is really weird, so I assure you that these exist.
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Dear goodness… I think I’m going to need therapy myself after reading that. I actually saw ‘Cautionary Tales for Children’ in a shop, not long ago but didn’t think anything of it because I didn’t know what was inside. Some of those just… I don’t think I’ll be sleeping for a while. =(
September 30th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
wow…im speechless……i wonder if those really exist….
September 29th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
and i used to think that the books of where poop and babies came from were scary :S
September 28th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
EXCELLENT. i now know what to get the kids for christmastime……along with some therapy vouchers.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
You’ve got it really wrong with the Belloc, I was the proud owner of a copy of “Cautionary Tales For Children” when I was a kid and it made me roll around on the floor laughing - it’s comedy, not scary.
You should have said Struwwelpeter. Now that *is* seriously dark and terrifying, like some kind of Victorian Edward Scissorhands.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:51 am
i was thinking about love you forever over the weekend..my mom used to read it to me all the time before bed…i would have nightmares
September 17th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I remember this one book I read as a kid called cafeteria, or something similar. It talked about how lunch ladies snuch bugs, eyeballs, and different types of fucked up crap into kids food. The book wasn’t too far off from real cafeterias.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:48 am
We had Outside Over There when I was growing up, and I loved it. It’s Maurice Sendak, so it’s well written and gorgeously illustrated. Little kids have twisted senses of humor without any help from adults. Some authors recognize that. I had a bunch of really bizarre and random children’s books when I was growing up. Some of the books on this list are just wrong, though!
September 14th, 2009 at 5:05 am
Wanna find a tall partner???
Here is a very nice place——— Tallfinder.c-o-m ———It’s where Tall singles looking for someone to enjoy their lifestyle with.You are just seconds away from taking that first step towards the life you have been longing for…
September 14th, 2009 at 5:05 am
hehee
September 11th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Wow. Did anyone stop to think they might scar the kids for life?
And that last one. Holy crap on a cracker! I almost want to meet the person behind that just to see how fucked up they are. lol
I have a six year old, and his grandparents bought him a book about strangers. And this thing covered child molestation, abduction(the characters father actually tells the kid that the abducted one is most likely dead), and how to deal with your creepy uncle. I wish I could remember the title. That thing certainly could have made the list!
September 10th, 2009 at 11:31 am
I’m disappointed that a book I actually own (”When is Daddy coming Home?”) didn’t make the list. It’s about a child pining for his father in PRISON for crying out loud, and he’s painted as some sort of saint throughout the whole book!
September 10th, 2009 at 9:14 am
they have fuck all on the brothers grimm lol
September 7th, 2009 at 9:15 am
i really don’t think “sometimes my mommy gets angry” is such a bad book…. the rest are mad fucked up though
September 5th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
After reading this, I’m trying real hard to remember a children’s story that wasn’t so screwed up.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:22 pm
canadius, they’re is short for they are. so you’re saying “pay they are rent”. he had it right
September 1st, 2009 at 5:31 pm
there shud be a parody book, and make it “The House That CRACKED Built”….no doubt it would be full of swaim and brockway inserting things into orfices that were not previously in seanbaby’s body beforehand, dob drinking himself silly and trying to make sweet irish love to a housecat, and bulchoz crying in the corner as jack o’brien sticks a gun in his mouth and promises bulcholz that “it will all be over soon.”
wait, nevermind, it shud be a movie(:
August 31st, 2009 at 4:01 pm
‘quote: compare electronic cigarettes Says:
August 31st, 2009 at 2:15 pm’
“…compare electronic cigarettes, pay their rent bony ridges also.Economically…”
It’s ‘pay THEY’RE rent’
Some folk shine alligator seven, and more often! grrrrr
August 31st, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Far from Havana, without knowing the?In writing factual, of the onslaught.Dog Lung cancer, what calls to.Paseo inicia con compare electronic cigarettes, pay their rent bony ridges also.Economically viable for, golf swing is.,
August 25th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
I read this, and I nearly peed myself. There are a few books I may have added, but, you did a WONDERFUL job. I sent this to everyone I could think of. My favorite is The House That Crack Built. Yes. Truly.
August 23rd, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Well at least now children will have some VARY interesting things to tell the therapist they’ll be seeing for the rest of their life.
August 19th, 2009 at 7:29 am
If these books can get published then I am going to write one about my own life called ‘The Misplaced Social Misfit with Low Self Esteem Who Later Saw His Situation Wasn’t Unique and he Wasn’t as Much of a Bastard and Failure as His Father Said He Was, and Turned Out to be a Likeable Guy Once he Got Out, Started Meeting New People, Strange Girls and Having a Beer or Two.’
Well I guess that’s the whole story in the title, so screw it.
August 15th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Who the hell would even write a book like#1 for children? And when would you read it to the child? A kid who’s never had that happen to them doesn’t want to read that shit and a kid that did have it happen to him doesn’t want to relive it! GAH! It’s dismays me…
August 12th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I looked up Alfie’s home on Wikipedia, it is self published, and autobiographical.
August 7th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
[...] Favorite Children’s Book: “Daddy Drinks Because Of You” and the other “10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children” [...]
August 5th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I says that nothing is more disturbing than these stories…
“Thomas the Train, who thought he could, and thus he did”
(anyone spot an Oprah sponsored cult there?) I do!!!
“Little Red Riding Hood” (Remember kids, no matter how long your grandmothers unclipped Claws… — I mean coincidentally curved black fingernails are. She is by NO means a bloodthirsty wolf who just ate your grandmother and put on her nightgown to fool you into letting her eat your fresh baked vagi… err, cookies. Oh my, where did that one come from?
and finally… “Matilda, the little girl who told lies and was freaking burned to Death.”
Who the hell writes this crap???
August 5th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I think there’s a person at my church who wrote a book about a kangaroo getting molested…
but she, the author got molested so it not funny… STOP LAUGHING DAMMIT!!!
August 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Man, my first grade teacher had someone come in and read Hiroshima no Pika to us… I was freaked out, and I still remember the end especially, when the mom combs the girl’s hair and still finds glass… haunting. *shudder*
August 4th, 2009 at 10:13 am
You can read Alfie online.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:29 am
I want to read Alfie’s Home it looks funny.
July 27th, 2009 at 6:36 am
there was another book like Alfie’s Home. only it’s about a seal that gets molested by uncle seal. seriously.
July 27th, 2009 at 12:16 am
HAHAHAHAHA! That shit is fucked up! HAHAHAHA!
July 26th, 2009 at 10:06 am
These are all demented and worth commenting on (maybe not #2; it’s a satire on disturbing children’s stories from an earlier time after all). However, _I Wish Daddy Didn’t Drink So Much_ sounds like something off the aforementioned Bad Ideas For Kids Books list.
It kind of reminds me of a book that showed up on an episode of “Reading Rainbow” (of all places) and to this day, it has the most disturbing title of any picture book I have ever heard of. Here it is on Amazon.
July 25th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
I love how the picture of the fat kid in #8 is cramming fries into his mouth.
Funny article
July 25th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
How did the Lonely Doll series by Dare Wright not end up on this list? It’s about a doll with no friends who meets a mean bear.. who she hangs out with because of insecurity. Then he spanks her for writing bad things about him in lipstick on a mirror. The end. Many others as well..
July 24th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
“That crack dealer lives in a GIANT MANSION! Screw fireman; I want to be a dealer when I grow up!”
Ohmigos, I was laughing soo hard…I started crying while I read the ‘Alfie’s Home’ one…Ohmigod, I need to read those! I haven’t read any of these, but there was one I’ve read before, called ‘Who Cares About Old People?’ I couldn’t stop laughing when I read it…Man, I need to read these!
July 21st, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I commented earlier about a book that disturbed me as a child. It was “Captain Murderer”, an adaptation of a Charles Dickens story.
http://www.shortstoryarchive.com/d/captain_murderer.html
No illustrations to terrify you here, but you can probably see why it made me squirm a little.
July 21st, 2009 at 9:04 am
[...] 10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children [...]
July 19th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
I always though that my favorite picture books were weird, (Jeremy and the Puddle is the best book ever-children riding on the backs of suicidal lemmings!) but these take the cake.
I really REALLY wanna read Alfie’s Home now.
July 19th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
I have never laughed harder at an article!
July 19th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Holy shit the book she talks about in the beginning that didn’t make the list… yeah my mother in law is obsessed with it. My poor husband is an only child and she probably does break in and rock him every night. Psychoooo!
July 18th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Especially the HEY FAGGOT scene
July 18th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
ROFLMAO I like the last one best
July 18th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
dear god, these are horrible. i need to go relax by playing some games. http://casualtygamer.com/2008/08/top-5-most-disturbing-video-game-moments/
July 18th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
“te ony true way to teach a child the balues of life is to beat into them.”
make them dr laura tough!
July 18th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
too long. needs abridging. otherwise.. those are odd. but i’d need to see them myself.
some “adult” books are horrifying to kids. withering heights. tolstoy [purportedly]. shakespeare to some. to me, just, “yawn”] and can you imagine trying to read bibles/qurans, etc?
ever read anything by lyndon larouche, ann coulter, etc? i stay away from that junk, too.
maybe some of these violent stories catch ppl differently. i recall Golding’s Lord of the Flies was rather violent, but built slowly (aka “boiled frogs”), and the violence fit into the theme.
July 14th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
the creepiest one i can remember from my childhood was this horrible story called like “calico” about a innocent kitty who gets force fed by marijuana by former owners. very traumatizing
July 13th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
What scares the fuck out of me is this: there were publishers who sat down, opened he cover, read these books..AND STILL DECIDED TO PUBLISH THEM ANYWAY!!!
July 12th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Dude, you missed: “Struwwelpeter” by Heinrich Hoffmann a really screwed up German book that I and all my German friend grew up with. It involves stories like if you suck your thumb a carpenter with huge scissors will slice your thumbs off. Or if you play with matches you WILL burn!
July 11th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Okay, what nutjob in their right mind would publish Alfie’s Home?!
July 11th, 2009 at 1:09 am
Also have to agree with some previous posters about “Max and Moritz”. The title should be in here as well, it’s one of the books that I was being read to as a child, when my parents still thought this is a pretty good storybook for children. Turns out I hated it back then, and I still hate it today.
I mean how sick can things get?
We have two boys who, granted, do a lot of horrible horrible pranks that even get one other person nearly killed, over time. The book is supposed to give kids a “mild scare”, but what the hell? Adults in the story try to murder them. Constantly. If any single one even before the last chapter *had really* caught up with them, they’d get killed. For instance, there is a baker who cruelly enjoys rolling them in dough, and throws them into the oven. The only reason they make it out alive is because they miraculously survive the temperature. But we all know they have been boiled alive.
And the second time they get killed for real, with a brilliantly smug miller throwing a sack with their legs still sticking out at the end, into the mill, and the author of the story was nice enough to describe what it sounds like when the two kids are slowly crushed and torn to shreds, and the pieces are fed to the animals.
How can anyone - today - read this to their children and expect them to like it?
July 9th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
thank goodness when I was little my mom just sat me in the living room with snacks and juicy juice and let me watch spongebob and powerpuff girls and dexter’s lab.
and all I read were books with the golden binds
I would have been scarred
I looked up The Gashlycrumb Tinies
and all I can say is
what the fucking shit
July 8th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Wait—weren’t those horses ODing on horse? Isn’t that not only life-threatening, but redundant?
And doesn’t ‘Latawnya’ sound like a name a Freeper would use to mock black people…?
July 7th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
I haven’t even read past the first line and I had to comment.
I swear to you, not three hours ago, I was thinking about the book “I Love You Forever” and that creepy song the mom sang to her son.
The book instilled a panic inducing fear of death since I was a child and just thinking about it freaks me out.
It relieves me greatly to know that I was not the only one damaged by that damned thing.
Thanks,
Sam
July 7th, 2009 at 8:18 am
Other than Edward Gory’s satire… my response is “WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING???” Oh, that’s right, they weren’t! And I work in Human/Civil Rights… none of these books have a damn positive message or any real help for children.
WHAT A BUNCH OF FUCKTARDS!
July 6th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
oh my goodness!! my mom bought that book #6, “The House That Crack Built” for her health class and let me read it when i was, like, 7. i had horrible nightmares about crack pipes and crack babies that night and i can’t look at that book to this day…
July 6th, 2009 at 11:10 am
te ony true way to teach a child the balues of life is to beat into them.
July 4th, 2009 at 2:49 am
my parents started on the kids books with moral lessons shit when i was little. and without a solid foundation of beaten in social values, the moral lessons are missed while an additional role model, with shifty behaviour (but behaviour that was successful), got added to our young lives.
i really should have been a pimp, a nice one that looks like a rabbit
June 30th, 2009 at 7:35 am
I read [or it was read to me] The Gashlycrumb Tinies when I was little. Along with The Melancholy Death of the Oyster Boy [a story by Burton about an Oyster child whose parents cook him to help his father get a hardon.] &I didn’t turn out *too* fucked up.
June 28th, 2009 at 9:05 am
[...] Posted by Reaver4567 I just realized you were talking about this list, am I right? 10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children | Cracked.com Aha. Yus. I noticed it was by that Micheal Swaim guy you have a crush on. :shifty [...]
June 28th, 2009 at 8:45 am
[...] (tramautising) children". ._. I just realized you was talking about this list, am I right? 10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children | Cracked.com __________________ "The Americans always do the right thing - but just when they [...]
June 26th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Man, I’m really glad I’m not the only one who Found love You Forever to be totally fucked up.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Wow. I just now read this on June 25th.
The day Michael Jackson died.
I think, with the MJ joke that was made at the end, that this is just irony. At least, I hope so.
June 25th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Hmm… My mom always read ‘Love you Forever’ or whatever it was called to my brother and I. I guess I should be glad that she didn’t read to us, ‘Who cares about Disabled people?’ or ‘Alfie’s Home’ Then we’d really be messed up.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Ha I work at a toystore and we carry Cautionary Tales for Children. As well as every other Gorey book. Ogdred Weary is the shit, and that book fucking rocks. Can’t believe ranked higher than the fucking Nazi book.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:38 am
[...] not really, I’ve been hammering on a K-2 of reviews lately–but this is just a link to a blog post which, as the title suggests…well, you get the picture. Enjoy, and a big h/t to Eden. [...]
June 25th, 2009 at 1:13 am
ALL HAIL TO ALFIE
June 25th, 2009 at 1:00 am
anyone read the 5-star reviews for Alfie’s Home on Amazon? OMG! “This book is wonderful for the ex-gay movement” Holy bigotry, batman! i mean, they’re eating it up, the message they got was “being gay means you molest people, being molested makes you gay, and a counselor will cure your gayness”. I don’t think even the author really meant it that way, but that is what people are teaching their kids on PURPOSE! we see this list as horrifyingly funny, but the books were published because some people actually want to give them to their kids. Now THAT is disturbing!
June 24th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
You forgot Strumpfelpeter. I imagine you didn’t want to overdo the German thing, but this book is unbelievable…
June 24th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Hey Davie:
David Greenberg authored Slugs.
Someone bought that book for me as a joke years ago and I filed it away in our library. Then earlier this year I found my husband, I shit you not, reading it to my 2 year old. My kid took to it like a fucking train wreck and it took me weeks before I could get it the hell out of the house. I will never forget his wide eyes staring at the freaky slug people getting ground up in a blender…
June 24th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Edward Gorey is delightfully morbid.
There was a book that fairly traumatized me as a child… I can’t remember the exact title, though I think it was something like “Captain Murder” or “Captain Blood”…
The plot involved a short, pirate-looking young man who wedded beautiful women and baked them into pies. He married a fair-haired young lady, then ate her, inspiring her dark-haired twin sister to take revenge. She persuaded him to marry her, then on her wedding night drank poison which killed him.
Anyone know what that book was called, exactly?
June 24th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
As a kid, I thought” Alice in Wonderland”was pretty bad. Felt like I was trapped in a nightmare. But for a really sick book, “The Box” wins, hands down! . I picked it up at the library for my preteen daughter. Thought it was a thriller. Turns out it’s about a girl who is kidnapped and thrown in a dark basement with some foul water, and a typewriter and she proceeds to type her experience on the paper. Goes on day after day, til she’s out of food, and water. She never sees her captor, or finds out why she was taken. She’s just left there to die. What possible reason on earth to write a f**ked up book like that?! My daughter and I were both traumatized- Me as a mother, imagining something like that happening to her. (If I had read it first, I never would have let her see it.) After that, I made sure I always read things first!
June 24th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
dude, dont be a jackass and call the bible fiction. im not saying its not, but you never know.
June 24th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Some of the fearstreet/goosbumps stories by R.L. Stine was freaky for me as a kid… I still won’t use the garbage disposal, and have the switch ducttaped down
June 24th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Have any of you ever read M is for Magic? I thought it was gonna be really sweet or awesome but I didn’t notice it was written by effing NEIL GAIMEN!!! Dear God, some of the stories were actually really freaky. I remember one where the found this old black cat that kept fighting Satan for him. It sounds stupid but damn….0_0
June 24th, 2009 at 7:27 am
Ah, yes. Edward Gorey. I distinctly remember being traumatized by Penny Candy (which he illustrated) when I was young. Mary is right - children are not his intended audience, and this should be noted.
June 24th, 2009 at 6:41 am
One time my friend read a book called “The day Jeff came home” or something about a teenage boy getting kidnapped and having sex with his kidnapper (also a dude), then going home and hearing rumors about having sex with his kidnapper (that aren’t true!) and dealing with them.
“Alfie’s Home” reminded me of it.
June 24th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Cautionary Tales for Children sounds like a modern and not nearly as terrifying version of Der Struwwelpeter.
June 24th, 2009 at 5:38 am
These books all teach kids the overarching and important lesson that “reading sucks.”
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:38 pm
when i was little i loved the stalker mom book
June 17th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Children are not the intended audience for Edward Gorey’s books.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:44 am
The ‘Who cares about disabled people?’ book got me laughing as I was what is considered a child prodigy, although I’ve never referred to myself as such. Anyway, it captures the essence of my youth - a constant feeling of being surrounded by cripples.
June 17th, 2009 at 2:20 am
I was apalled by all of these books but when I read about Alfie’s Home, I couldn’t believe there was actually a book like this. I went and looked it up. Than when I read it, it made me angry! This is so messed up. I don’t understand what publisher would even publish something like this. Children need books that make them feel safe, not scared.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I don’t know if anyone said this before, but Vigna (author of I Wish Daddy Didn’t Drink So Much) kinda sounds like vagina.
June 15th, 2009 at 1:11 am
I had a nice little chat with my mother recently about love you always, and she informed me that even when I was little she thought it was creepy. However, she still read it to us. She then promised to never break into my window and cuddle me when i was forty. I’m still scared. Also, Angus Oblong’s book creepy Susie should be on this list.
June 13th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Alfie’s home was actually in my old elementary schools library. I’m serious! What was bad was one of the girls in my fourth grade class was reading it and didn’t stop at the second page.
June 12th, 2009 at 11:05 am
I have an old copy of ‘The Gashlycrumb Tinies’ on my bookshelf now.
I grew up with it. Maybe that explains why I have such a twisted sense of humor now. Meh. Edward Gorey is still a genius in my eyes.
June 10th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
# Davie Says:
June 10th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
You’re missing one. “Slugs”. I can’t remember the author, but it’s essentially a sweet little rhyme that goes over all the wonderful benefits of brutally torturing, killing and eating the titular mollusk. On the last three pages, it cheerfully reminds the reader that if they go ahead and do what the book encourages them to, giant nightmare slugs will kidnap them in their beds, slime them to death, and eat their brains. Not fucking kidding.
And this is all accompanied by cutely horrifying illustrations of malformed, pudgy children with dark circles around their tiny eyeballs doing unspeakable things to disturbingly anthropomorphized slugs. Yes, this is an actual book. Fortunately, I first came across it when I was twelve, and wasn’t completely scarred for life afterwards. Kudos to anyone who’s heard of this and knows the author’s name.
June 6th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
To be honest given the plot (here being used in the loosest sense of the word) of the last one, it sounds like it was written by Stephenie Meyer…the author of those terrible ‘vampire’ books (I’d also just like to say that your videos are awesome)
June 5th, 2009 at 9:43 am
You forgot the bible.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:52 am
/thank
This article at long last, gave me an explanation for why the Magnum PI theme is playing when I wake up.
May 30th, 2009 at 9:26 am
I know its lame but I personly got fucked up over reading “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs”..
I literally thought food fell from the sky somewhere on this planet for 3 years of my childhood.. Yeesh…
May 27th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Hahaha Alfies Home had me dying! Im trying to do my homework and now I dont think i can concentrate after reading that
May 24th, 2009 at 2:34 am
How was “The O’Rielly Factor For Kids” not number 1? Though the one you have is pretty messed up, I think Bill’s book has it beat.
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:31 am
This cracked me up. Thanks!
When I was growing up (late 70s early 80s,) I remember a series of cheap paperbacks, which, in retrospect, must have been created with “Let’s get these kids reading with our gritty, tough stories”
These included:
*The house haunted by a guy who shot himself in the head (included a drawing of the guy with a bleeding hole in his head). We’re told in life he “sniffed glue”
*The basement haunted by the decomposing corpse ghost of a woman who was murdered by her husband, then cut up and buried under the floor bricks.
*The guy on the baseball team who brought cheer and joy, even when the team lost. Surprise! He was sick and then he died.
*Hiroshima (I remember the line “their skin turned black and fell off”)
*”Cool Sed,” some pimp-esque lowlife who’s oh-so-cool. Then he gets shot. “Cool Sed is Dead.”
It wasn’t until years later that it occurred to me how odd those books were. Not sure what the series were called, but Atrocious things can happen, so watch out. Of course they can happen even when you DO watch out would have been good.
May 22nd, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Add Neil Gaiman’s awful and depressing books to this list. He is apparently a big fan of The Labyrinth and aspires to write that type of book. His plots range from a boy who lives in a graveyard (and betrays his only friend) to wolves living in the walls to evil mirror parents insisting you sew buttons into your eyes, each one of his stories is a bigger Freudian nightmare than the next (he’s a Scientologist so that might explain the paranoia…) Books like these are either written by adults for other adults to exhibit their wit (or propaganda), or they are written by adults with deep mental problems who have no idea how much their demented tales reveal about themselves.
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
You forgot the Children’s Bible, that surely has to be #1.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
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May 19th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
@korilian
OH MY GOD, STRUWWELPETER!
That was the book my mom used to show me when I was a kid and misbehaved!
To this day it terrifies me. It should definitely be on the list. D:
May 19th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
[...] throughly depressing children’s entertainment here. [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
omfg why are these real books LMFAOOOO this is fuckin` horrible… seriously.. the last one is the worse lmfao
May 17th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
On Amazon, Alfie’s Home is like, $100.
Oh my God, why??
May 15th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Edward Gorey’s works weren’t published 100 years ago– many of them were written and published from 1950-1992- by a man who passed on in 2000 at age 75- and i have read some of these books as children– the reviews are very misleading and inaccurate.
this list is a total hack
May 15th, 2009 at 12:35 am
Hideous. I’d like to offer this alternative for book #2. It’s the same principle, written a little earlier, but with gruesome illustrations that will seem more familiar to the Nickelodeon generation. http://www.bobstaake.com/struwwelpeter/
It might get disqualified because one of the stories teaches kids not to racist… although it seems to do this by implying that being made black is just as bad as being burned alive, or having your thumbs cut off. Hmmm.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I remember Love you Forever. Always weirded me out too.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Latawnya the naughty horse represent!!
I recommend everyone read it, it’s just that funny. and listen to an audio version some dude did, his voices are HILARIOUS!
also, “outside over there” is a sweet childrens book, and only earnt its place on this list due to its popularity.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I want to read Alfie’s Home while high.
May 10th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
I had Cautionary Tales as a child!
It was part of a collection called “Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls”. One of my favourite books of all time.
I actually remember this verse from one of the poems:
Mamie, in a manner placid,
Fed the cat boracic acid.
Whereupon the cat grew frantic,
Executing many an antic.
Aha! Cried Mamie, overjoyed,
Pussy is an alkaloid!
I was also a big fan of the book of Eastern European fairy tales I had as a child. Not exactly Disney.
Needless to say, my reading collection horrified man a babysitter.
May 10th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
That you know about Edward Gorey only makes you even more amazing than I already knew you were. I totally want you Mr Swaim.
May 10th, 2009 at 9:48 am
My mum used to read me this story called ‘Not Now Bernard’ about a boy whose parents constantly ignored him then he got eaten by a monster and they didn’t notice, and just put the monster who had eaten Bernard to bed in Bernard’s bed, even when the monster tried to tell them he was a monster and he had eaten Bernard.
That upset me.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
fantastic article, i giggled throughout!
May 6th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
What about The Little Match Girl? Dirty lil’ dying orphan hallucinating about a good meal while trying to sell matches in the street in the middle of winter (on Christmas no less) to avoid her father’s beat down. Fuuuuuuucked up. That shit stayed with me forever.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Why isn’t Struwwelpeter on this list? Gotta love the Scissor Man who leaps through the window to snip off the offending digits of habitual thumbsuckers.
My favorite gruesome “children’s” tale: Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Red Shoes”. Little Karen’s punishment for wearing red shoes to church is being forced to dance madly over hill and dale, until a kindly executioner chops off her feet and makes her wooden ones. Her real feet go dancing off in the red shoes and keep showing up to scare her every time she goes to church. At the end she hallucinates being in church and dies of happiness. What a charming and uplifting story!
Seriously though, books like Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry and I Wish Daddy Didn’t Drink So Much can be of great benefit to children. Kids who are going through any kind of family trauma or abuse invariably think that (a) they’re the only one, and (b) it’s all their own fault. Reading this kind of book in a classroom or therapy setting helps them understand that neither is true, and gives them ways to cope with their situation and words to speak out about it.
However, that “Alfie” thing looks too crudely done to have any redeeming value whatsoever, and appears to have actually been written by a child molester. Eeeyew.
May 5th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Spectacular comments! I teach children’s literature at SImon Fraser University — if you lived here, I would ask you in to guest lecture!
May 5th, 2009 at 3:25 am
“Dad’s in Prison” is still my favourite.
Also “When the Wind Blows” is a great graphic novel/cartoon on nuclear war.
I would buy Barefoot Gen if I could find it, still haven’t gotten around to buying Maus yet.
May 3rd, 2009 at 6:51 pm
some of these books are actually very helpful in therapy situations… they give young children the words to describe what’s they’re going through and provide validation
May 3rd, 2009 at 11:56 am
….Why are athletes in the ‘disabled’ book?
Has anyone ever stopped to ask this?
May 3rd, 2009 at 9:04 am
THE FAT KID IS WEARING A TOTAL CARTMAN SHIRT, WHAT UP.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:11 am
I work in a bookstore and sell a copy of Love You Forever practically every day. I can guarantee that anyone that has a baby will get this as gift at the baby shower…probably more than one.
I get a lot of customers that are taking teaching courses and child psychology classes and they have asked for “SOmetimes my Mommy Gets Angry” but never any of these other titles.
So thanks Swaim…now I can recommend all these!
Fear and terror make the world go round…start early, buy these books.
April 29th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
haha awesome article!
April 29th, 2009 at 9:27 am
I know there’s another article for this, but the original versions of fairytales are pretty scary. And I read them when I was a kid.
Thanks, I really needed to visualize my grandmother devouring my sister.
April 29th, 2009 at 6:13 am
[...] man! Classic scenario which wins. Can I tell you how amusing that website is? They have a 10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children list. The link says “10 great books for people who hate their children”. I love [...]
April 27th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
I liked that book, Love you forever..
lol one time I was at the doctors office and I was reading stories on the tables..there was one exactly like alfies home…I had nightmares after reading it….
April 27th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
also to MontyB it’s from the book “Gashlycrumb Tinies” that’s mentioned under #2
http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/stage/7535/gorey.html
April 27th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
My mother actually did try to drown me in a bathtub. If only I had read “Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry”, I would have been ready for her.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Anyone know where the illustration in the intro (the one with either death or a skeleton with an umbrella) came from? it’s creepy but I kind of want to see it full size.
April 26th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
What a horrible book Alfie’s home is! Are you purposely trying to tramatize children? Man, it’s like watching an episode of Maury and calling it an after-school special.
April 26th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
There’s a humor list running around on the net which I have included below. The very, very scary part is that the real books above are worse than most of the imaginary titles.
A very disturbing, amusing and enlightening post all at once.
Children’s Books You’re Not Likely to See on the Shelves this Year
You Are Different and That’s Bad
The Boy Who Died From Eating All His Vegetables
Meet Dad’s New Wife, Robert
Fun four letter Words to Know and Share
Hammers, Screwdrivers and Scissors: An I Can Do It Book
The Kids’ Guide to Hitchhiking
Let’s Draw Betty and Veronica Without Their Clothes
Sally Was So Bad Her Mom Stopped Loving Her
Curious George and the High Voltage Fence
All Cats Go to Hell
The Little Sissy Who Snitched
Some Kittens Can Fly.
That’s it, I’m Putting You Up for Adoption
Grandpa Gets a Casket
The Magic World Inside the Abandoned Refrigerator
Garfield Gets Feline Leukemia
Strangers Have the Best Sweets
Whining, Kicking and Crying to Get Your Way
You Were an Accident
Things Rich Kids Have But You Never Will
Pop Goes The Hamster…And Other Great Microwave Games
The Man in the Moon Is Actually Satan
Your Nightmares Are Real
Where Would You Like to Be Buried?
Eggs, Toilet Paper, and Your School
Why Can’t Mr. Fork and Ms. Electrical Outlet Be Friends?
Places Where Mommy and Daddy Hide Neat Things
Daddy Drinks Because You Cry
April 26th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
i just remembered how much “love you forever” scared the crap out of me when i was a little kid. wow
April 26th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
April:
so very, very and scarily true. maybe the whole book was written as an attempt by the author to communicate to the world that conan o’brian is an incestuous paedophile
April 26th, 2009 at 2:46 am
“Love you forever. Like you for always. As long as your living my baby you’ll be.” Damn creepy book there. Havent read it in like 9 years since my kido was a wee one but damn if the mention of it didnt bring that creepy old bats chant screaming to the forefront of my brain.
April 25th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Eliza:
The problem is when the book gets read in a school setting. Then you have the future football players turned janitors figuring out why Jimmy’s mom is so fucked up and Jimmy is forced to transfer schools after getting expelled for fighting the future football players. Some books are just best left in the counselor’s office.
April 25th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
if i was at a barnes and nobles and caught my kid reading alfies home i’d raise hell!
April 25th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
you forgot the biggest work of fiction, and terror inducing fairy tale book of all time…the bible
April 25th, 2009 at 11:21 am
While some of the books sound horrible some don’t. The book about a bipolar Mom? Intended for the children of Bipolar parents. It’s a hard book to read, but my daughter liked that we could talk about my depression and how it effects her. The book about an an alcoholic father? It’s for the children of alcoholics.
Not all children live happy lives. Some grow up with bad parents, some in bad neighborhoods with crack houses, and believe it or not some kids can feel threatened by younger siblings. Their emotions deserve to be addressed and talked about.
April 25th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Curious that no one had mentioned, not in the article or in the comments, that ‘Outside Over There’ was written by Maurice Sendak…who wrote ‘Where The Wild Things Are.’ And that is one of the best children’s books ever. So somehow I doubt ‘Outside Over There’ is as traumatizing a book, or anywhere in the same category, as books written for six year olds about drug abuse or eliminating the Jewish taint.
April 25th, 2009 at 2:32 am
This is really fucked up…
What were they thinking? The stupidity of men kind can cross all borthers.
April 25th, 2009 at 1:49 am
I actually own a copy of “Sometimes Mommy Drinks Too Much”.
Freal.
April 24th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I read outside over there when I was little. maybe mom gave it to me because i had a new baby sister. never thought about that. going to go read it again, then watch labrinth.
April 24th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Wow, the molesting uncle looks EXACTLY like Conan O’Brien.
April 24th, 2009 at 8:20 am
I loved ‘Struwwelpeter’ as a kid. Still do, in fact. My favourite story was the one with the hunter and the rabbit. I think ‘Evil Friedrich’ is the reason why I’m afraid of dogs… It’s about a boy who’s tormenting animals until one day a big dog bites him, or something.
What I also liked was ‘Max and Moritz’, it’s about two boys who play mean pranks on people. Their last prank has something to do with a bakery, and they somehow fall into the tough and made into pretzels and eaten by those they pranked.
I really need to see where those two books have gotten to.
Everything the Nazis said and did was sick and twisted so I don’t think the Nazi book counts. Still, if you had to include one, ‘The Poison Mushroom’ is probably the worst Nazi book (children or otherwise), ever.
April 24th, 2009 at 5:43 am
Well then…nevermind. Clearly I should not make baseless, unresearched points. There goes my writing career.
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:56 pm
the last part in #1 was HILARIOUS!
What Were They Thinking?
Not much.
What Kids Who Read It Think:
“Wow, this is shit. I’m going to go watch Pokémon.”
LOL!
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:20 pm
wow, what an unfunny and shitty article. I want my five minutes back.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:25 pm
In all fairness, the “What Kids Who Read It Think” part of #4 was probably the author’s intention. Which is probably worse.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Wow, I know of another great book that every child should read,
it’s called “Everything Can Be Smashed.”
It was read to me when i was younger and i still managed to turn out fine…
Here’s a link to youtube where youcan read itif you want
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w-bRuzrYPE
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:49 pm
“Oh hehe, I remember reading “Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack” in 6th grade, at the school library. i was interested cause it was the dumbest title for a book i ever heard.By the end of the book shes giving blowjobs for drugs. i probably didnt need to read that when i was 12 hehe.”
The title is supposed to be ironic and deliberately misleading; Dinky never actually does any drugs and definitenly doesn’t end up prostituting herself for them. I think you’re writing more about what you WISH had happened by the end…
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:00 pm
oh shit moose! i remember that one and it scared the bejesus out of me. hey whats that picture in the intro from? it looks really cool.
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Remember kids: kids books written by christians should be avoided like the plague.
Don’t those stupid ex-gay therapists realize that Freud has been discredited? Not all gays had daddy problems, and not all of them were molested. Most molested kids end up straight, anyway.
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Oh god, I’m sick and tired of people saying that fat people are just “disabled” and have a “different lifestyle”. Fat people are fat because they chose to be. They chose to eat 6 burgers a day. Unless they have a glandular problem, I won’t tolerate fat people. It’s this kind of “tolerance” that makes fat people think it’s okay to make America look like a giant sea of beer bellies and muffin tops. As a minority, I don’t want to be equated with fatasses.
Except John Goodman. He’s the man, and therefore awesome.
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
@Montana Lee
First, there is the dictionary definition which means “to cause to move or proceed slowly; delay or impede.” So for example, when we say someone is mentally retarded, what we are saying is that their mental processes operate at a slower rate than what is generally considered to be the norm.
Second, there is the common usage form of the word in which we use “retard” to refer to something that fails. This can apply to anything which can fail in some aspect or another.
What you are saying is this: when we recognize that something is retarded (i.e. fail) we equivocate between the two definitions listed above. When we do this, we inevitably come to regard retards as not only suffering from a medical condition (i.e. mental retardation), but also as a giant pile of fail.
Retard is not, and should not, be equated with a racial slur. We’re running on the euphemism treadmill, here.
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Um, what kind of a title is that, Hiroshima no Pika? It means Hiroshima’s Sparkle. What?
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
What gets me is you let us know how screwed up the title “Who Cares About Disabled People?” is yet on the same page you toss around the word retarded like it’s no big deal. I don’t get why these have to be written with words that put down a group of people to just get a laugh.
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Scary stories to tell in the dark! That shit was awesome, I remember one vivdly about a scarecrow named Harold. His creators were very cruel to him and one day he fucking skinned one of them. Well, there’s alot more to the story but goddamn was it terrifying shit to ready at seven years old.
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:48 am
You know, I still have the copy of Cautionary Tales for Children at my house.
My dad used to read it to me all the time as a joke when I was little. I still have the first poem memorized.
But yeah, that book was totally meant for the last generation of the British Empire. It’s so incredibly politically correct, which is why I love it so much. I’ll be reading it to my kids someday.
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:41 am
I’m sure I put the wrong website, but I recently tried to submit a book I wrote called Qwik LAFs: a bathroom read. It was not in their top 10%, which is fine as I know I can tweak it and make it a winner, BUT to look at the above listed books and see that they made it to publication. Wow! I have more hope and inspiration now than I ever did.
Please tell me that these morons aren’t parenting children. Because if they are, then they are reading this crap to their children. OY!
Let’s all smoke a joint and blow smoke in the “writer’s” faces. Maybe they’ll learn to chill out.
April 23rd, 2009 at 8:51 am
This is a great news!! so, for celebration, I want to recommend you lonely guys who hate lonely nights a great online club to meet your activity partner, romance and lover, either for heat or passion: __Tallconnect.com___ the most popular place for hot modelss, handsome men meet and mingle! u might be surprise what u end up with!!LOL
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:25 am
Thanks for this, I showed my wife and found out shes reading two of these to our son now, one we own and one out from the library, great…
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:11 am
But that is not true. It is a terrible lie! … said the happy flower to the sad old snail.” lol! great stuff Swaim
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:02 am
Children are pretty resilient. I mean, I’ve hit them, used fire, super glue, I even tickled one at their parents parent’s funeral because everyone looked so sad. Fuck these books for doing a better job than me.
April 23rd, 2009 at 5:23 am
I read a poem by Hillaire Belloc about a child who exploded a balloon and killed his entire family. It was very weird. But the original Grimm fairy tales are pretty horrible. I have memories of having rainy day videos about three boys who were turned into ravens and so they could become human again their sister had to not talk for 6 years. All because of an evil stepmother, who then kept stealing the sisters children and almost got her burnt as a witch. It was all very traumatising. On the other hand, i loved Labyrinth when I saw it at the same age.
April 23rd, 2009 at 3:26 am
Not sure if this list is just for books in English, but what about The Poisonous Mushroom? It’s essentially the same as number four, except harsher and in German.
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:45 am
Playbahnosh doesn’t understand sarcasm of satire.
He’s a brilliant wonderful man!
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:15 am
The artist for the Scary Stories books was Stephen Gammell, and I’ll agree his art was nightmare fuel.
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:32 am
I remember “Scary Stories.” I used to check them out from the city library. Now I’m going to try and find them.
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:22 am
‘Oh God, my grandparents had a German kids book that was like ‘Cautionary Tales’, but they were hardcore ’scare the kids into behaving’ European stories.’
I was thinking just that while reading this article - it’s called Struwwelpeter, by Heinrich Hoffman, or ‘Shock Headed Peter’ in the English version. It’s a dark, vivid, marvellous book.
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:01 am
You should have added on Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
It was meant to be as it sounds: A kids book full of ghost stories.
In reality… dear god. Run a search on google images for the title. The illustrations are scarring. The books (there’s three in all) usually top the challenged lists due to their content, and it’s getting harder and harder to find them now.
I’m an adult now and I -still- shudder when I think back to those books. The stories themselves are fairly average (though a good bit more gruesome than is usually allowed. Skinning, disemboweling, etc.), I think it’s the illustrations that end up getting to you.
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:36 am
If you want really disturbing kids lit, try “The Legend of Croque-Mitaine” by Ernest Louis Victor Jules L’Epine, as translated by Thomas Hood the Younger in the late 19th century. It’s got illustrations of impaled corpses, people being hung, and so on. And it’s pretty clearly designed to make the children hate black people and muslims. There’s one memorable depiction of a burly knight punching out the teeth of the prophet Mohammed.
The crowning weirdness, though, comes at the end. The heroine apparently thought it would be a good idea to distract the (Moslem) enemy by taking off her armor and all her clothing. It works! Let’s hear it for unorthodox tactics. Of course she also dies, so maybe it wasn’t all THAT great an idea.
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:33 am
“homosexuality isn’t natural, it’s caused by childhood trauma, such as being molested. There’s no such thing as being gay. All gay people are just screwed up heterosexuals.”
You guy’s are tards. Not every gay person has been molested or had childhood trauma.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Oh God, my grandparents had a German kids book that was like ‘Cautionary Tales’, but they were hardcore ’scare the kids into behaving’ European stories.
There was a little girl who played with her parents cigarettes when they were out and her dress caught fire so she burned to a pile of ashes which her cats cried over (all illustrated).
There was Suppen Kaspar who refused to eat his soup so his parents let him starve away to nothing and die.
There was a boy who sucked his thumbs so much that this dude ran up to him with giant shears and chopped both of the kid’s thumbs off. (So Clock Tower 1!)
Bad kids stories now are just bad because any ape can get a kids book printed. I’m a nanny, I’ve pretty much run the gamut of shit books. Bad kids stories from the Victorian era and prior were friggin’ scary. Everything was fatal and everything was a monster and everyone would shank your face for not washing your hands before dinner.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:18 pm
“homosexuality isn’t natural, it’s caused by childhood trauma, such as being molested. There’s no such thing as being gay. All gay people are just screwed up heterosexuals.”
Word.
Also: “You remind me of G’hey!”
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Fun with Dick and Jane was about Jane having Fun with a Dick.
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Edward Gorey!!! AAAAaaaaaH!
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I believe “Alfie’s Home” was written by Richard Cohen, a so-called “reparative therapist” (the ones who claim homosexuality is a mental illness and can be cured). Not surprisingly, Cohen was rejected by the mainstream mental health community due to numerous ethics violations.
The point of the book is obvious then: homosexuality isn’t natural, it’s caused by childhood trauma, such as being molested. There’s no such thing as being gay. All gay people are just screwed up heterosexuals.
The guy is a sick, sick man. This book was also self-published. Another bit of information that should shock no-one.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:57 pm
FYI kids, you can read the propoganda one online: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/pudel.htm
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:40 pm
The last one made me laugh, especially the part about Requiem for a Dream.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:15 pm
I read The House That Crack Built and it was probably the MOST screwed up and funniest book i have ever read. I have just added like 8 books on my to read list.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:36 pm
shutup bitch.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Some of these books are actually pretty good. I don’t really like the argument that children should be sheltered from the horrors of life or that children are too stupid to understand what it taught them. Honestly, sheltering a kid from everything that might possibly make a dark mark on his or her darling little brain and then throwing him or her to deal with the world on his or her own after 18 years or so is what would really mess a kid up.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I had Cautionary tales for Children! (or similar, I had a seperate book of Matilda: Who Told Lies, and another book with a collection of Belloc’s nightmares).
Wow. I’m so glad that not only other people have it, but I can now use this page to validate my crazy-talk to other people who don’t understand the trauma of my childhood reading.
To this day I pretty much can’t call the emergency services. Even when there was an assault in a nightclub, I called the police non-emergency number. Because if you call out the emergency services and it’s not a real emergency, you’ll die in a fire. (this was reinforced by the fire brigade coming to my school and showing us on a video that if you called them and there wasn’t a fire, your best friends would die horribly in a car crash).
I still vividly remember then opening line “Matilda told such dreadful lies, they made one gasp and stretched one’s eyes” the important bit where she cryed out the window to escape the heat and smoke “Matilda cried out ‘Fire! Fire! but passers just said ‘Little liar!” and closing line “and when Matilda’s aunt returned, Matilda and the house were burned”.
*shudder*
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Cautionary Tales for Children was really funny, actually. I got it for Christmas once.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:20 pm
As mostly hilarious and terrifying I’m sure all of those are….for whoever is interested you should also read Struwwelpeter which is a lot like Cautionary Tales for Children….but German and with creepy drawings. If my nanny had read this to me my life would be sooooo much weirder.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
@Pathogen & Chris:
you suck
read other people’s comments before you post yours
Eric Says:
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:54 am
Eric Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 9:38 pm
I was expecting the bible to be #1:
“do everything we tell you with unquestioning obeedience, or our all-loving god will cast you into fire and torture you for eternity”
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:01 pm
omg im gonna shit myself laughing from this article, i want to read these books
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
You forgot the Bible. That one’s guaranteed to fuck kids up.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Mmm.
“Crickle-Crack” is a good one. The tragic tale of the crack-addicted infant squirrel…
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
“Hiroshima No Pika” doesn’t seem so bad, if you can get past the cover art. It actually won an award in the 1980s.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
[...] your kids books before buying them 10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children | Cracked.com funny article on the subject. Some of those are too much lol [+] Rate this post [...]
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:44 pm
What no Struwwelpeter? Now that is a scary book!
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Oka.About”Hiroshima No Pika”.
Yes,Innocent People Died At Hiroshima and Nagasaki!!
However,Innocent People Died in Shanghai;Nanking;Hong Kong;
Singapore and Manila!!
And How About The Innocent Chinese Civillians Who Died During The Rape of Shanghai in 1937??
What About The Mistreatment of Allied POW’s After The Fall of Hong Kong;Singapore and The Phillipines??
Unfortunately,While Japan Makes Some Very Great Technonlogy,They Have a Very Bad Case of Short Term Memory Loss When It Comes To Their Role in WWII!!
I’m Pretty Sure That Pat Buchannan’s and Mel Gibson’s Fathers Read Them
“The Poodle-Pug-Dachsund-Pinscher”When They Were Children!!
Finally,Judith Vagina’s”I Wish My Daddy Didn’t Drink So Much”Sounds Like Some DWI School Teacher’s Life Story!!!
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
My mom has bipolar. She never tried to drown me in the bathtub, although she can get very annoying. Much better now, she used to be unable to function.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
*gasps loudly*
I /loved/ Outside Over There. And also Edward Gorey, in general. I now have all his compilation (I originally read the Gashlycrumb Tinies when I was ~8.)
…
It probably explains a lot, though.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:35 pm
My favorite book when I was little was Jeremy and the Puddle.
In which an obnoxious brat purposely jumps into a puddle so that he can soak his mom in water-falls through a hole…KEEPS falling though a hole, until he lands on the backs of some lemmings [BTW this all takes place in this really creepy goth looking underground tunnel] the lemmings all decide to COMMIT SUICIDE BY JUMPING OFF THIS CLIFF [Another BTW, The cliffs are actually all these creepy old looking dude's mouths so it looks like someone grandpa throwing up lemmings]
But! At the last minute Jeremy is snatched up by this creepy ass pink librarian flamingo. The flamingo finds out he’s from THE OUTSIDE and locks him in this room with this little reptile boy who tell him that this race of reptile people exist only to wait next to mirrors until people walk in front of them, then they quickly dress up [they have a cross dressing frog] in your clothes and mimic your every move. And if you make a mistake-TO THE MAGGOT FARMS YOU GO.
The reptile boy [Borg or something] and Jeremy have a quickie in prison.
Then they are sent to see the Emperor-who’s clothes Jeremy immediately tries to eat because he is clearly mentally challenged. GASP! THE EMPEROR IS A FISH! Then they all try and kill Jeremy and he escapes blah, blah, blah…
What REALLY makes this book creepy besides the fact that all these people are hostile and bitter at their forced servitude, is the pictures. Trees=creepy old men. Rock=creepy old men. Towers=creepy old men. And they all look like disturbed glory holes.
God I loved that book.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Charlotte’s Web traumatized me as an adult… not to mention that terrible hundred years old German book about that child who does not wash and clip his fingernails…
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:25 pm
[...] Cracked: [...]
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Wow. Just wow. I think i’m going to read all of these.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
awesome article. really enjoyed. Super fucked up!
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Hehe, I remember reading “The House That Crack Built”. I believe I was in elementary school (Which incidentally, is only a few years ago).
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I also thought that Love You Forever was slightly creepy (you know, especially the part where the son randomly acquires a baby at the end despite the fact that he’s about fifty), but these are much creepier. Go you.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I’ve read none of these, but now I plan to! And I’m gonna start huffing paint in order to get a disabled badge for the car-park.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I laughed so hard at Alfie’s Home
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
So, is anyone else angry?
I’m angry.
There ought to be some sort of psych test for people who write kids’ books. That last one isn’t much better than the ‘Lisa’ Jack Chick tract.
I’m off to set something that doesn’t belong to me on fire.
P.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:58 pm
i read the same book you did! we have so much in common! we should hang out…
*meets with counsolor*
*rainbows out ass*
lets go kill fags.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Pretty much anybody who read this article has read or heard of “Love You Forever”. Its a big mixture of sweet sentimentality and overall creepiness, but its a classic.
I have a feeling Swaim was freakin’ hilarious as a kid too.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Great job, Swaim! I thought the Giving Tree was the worse possible kid’s book—oh how naive I was!
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I have a copy of the House That Crack Built, but I need to get the one about horses snorting coke…
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Oh hehe, I remember reading “Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack” in 6th grade, at the school library. i was interested cause it was the dumbest title for a book i ever heard.By the end of the book shes giving blowjobs for drugs. i probably didnt need to read that when i was 12 hehe.oh and by contrast, “The Highest Hit” wasn’t about drugs at all.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
“RobertsTheVile Says:
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:26 am
Uh, you guys do know that human civilization as we know it is most well and certainly fucked, right? If we honestly looked at things here, we’d be wishing that the goddamn MOON would crash into the earth and eliminate the blight-that-is-us from infecting the rest of the universe…Seriously, let’s just kill ourselves off and feel good that we went out doing at least one thing right.”
Reply: Hey, asshole. If you hate being a human so much, why don’t you do the world a favor and drop dead?!
Anyway, the list is fine, but I think you should have included that “Love You Forever” book (and not as a fleeting reference either).
I remember reading the “Scary Stories to Read in the Dark” books as a kid and they just didn’t scare or disturb me. They were fun to read, but they didn’t scare the crap out of me.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Are these actually real?
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:08 pm
hey vic vanity , are you sure youre statistics arent skewed? does the fact that most children are harmed by their mothers stem from the fact that most children never see daddy in their lives?
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:03 pm
There is a book called Old Devil Wind. Why a person thought images befitting of the first Grudge movie would be good for a childrens book, however, I will never know
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:51 pm
So, if I huff paint, will I get an awesome jacket like that?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:34 pm
“JM Says: April 22nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Umm…no, the Labyrinth movie was based on a book called The Labyrinth, which was pretty much identical to the movie except with less unrelated David Bowie songs. ”
Sorry JM, but both the novel and story book versions of The Labyrinth are based on the movie. They have the words “based on the movie” printed right on the cover.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I think Enough Said was the inspiration for Alfie’s Home
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Enough Said youre a racist asshole
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
ever notice that the Villian in almost all these stories happens to be Daddy. yet statitics prove that children are most likely to be abused and killed by their mothers
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
What publisher in their right mind would publish Alfie’s Home?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
No wonder kids today are fucked up.
I I were a kid and had read “Alfie’s Home” I think I would have shot myself.
Maybe it is high time for an apocalypse
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
You may be the funniest man alive, Swaim. By the way, you didn’t include the book that traumatized me as a child. I think it was called “Night of the Grizzly” or something. It was some anti-animal fashion propaganda that had a king kill a crocodile to make a purse for the queen, and the queen kill a bear to make a cloak for the king. They exchange gifts and all is well- until the animal skins come to life, the bear crushes the king to death and the crocodile purse swallows the queen whole with just her foot hanging out of the purse’s mouth in a puddle of blood. This was a CHILDREN’S picture book! Still, I kind of wish my mom didn’t throw it out. It would be so hilarious today.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
That book about horses smoking drugs looks like it was written by someone smoking drugs.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I am surprised that old classic “A Trip to the Big House” isn’t on here.
A heartwarming tale about visiting Daddy in prison.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Athletes = black people,
and I’m willing to guess that “child prodigies” = Asians.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
My grandma has a book called little brown coco about (the fattest knappy headed Negro)
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
The one about the horses is lame.
I read the Gashlycrumb Tinies when I was young, and it was indeed traumatizing.
Thanks, Edward Gorey!
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:39 pm
A friend read one of the “I Have Two Daddies” books to her niece and boy was that traumatizing. Mainly because of my friend’s mother physically attacking her for it. In front of the kid.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I really don’t get all of the hatred towards Nazis.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Alfie’s Home is basically a biography for the author, Richard A. Cohen. Dick was molested by his uncle and ended up being gay, then he joined the Moonies and realized that he was straight (or maybe bi). Now he’s the most prominent proponent of the “gay can be cured” theory.
Look up “ex-gay therapist on CNN,” he’s effin’ hilarious.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
for #3. it is such crap. black people are the ones who push drugs on white people. The person who wrote that is so dumb. I’m not saying all black people are drug dealers. but its almost always the black kid that’s selling the drugs. ok always.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
the bible and qur’an are far worse for children than any of these books
not saying anyone should let their children read anything on this list
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Michael Swaim is God…I guess that maes DOB Jesus or something. Wait no that’s retarded.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
popurls.com // popular today…
story has entered the popular today section on popurls.com…
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Umm…no, the Labyrinth movie was based on a book called The Labyrinth, which was pretty much identical to the movie except with less unrelated David Bowie songs. Outside Over There just had a similar story line. But as a child I loved Outside Over There.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
You forgot the bible.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
We were told to read to our children to help with the illiteracy problem here in the US. They never said what we had to read. My son picked up a Chuck Palahniuk book the other day and LOVED it. Twisted parenting is the way to go.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
OMG i seriously read the house that crack built in school!!!
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
LOVED Cautionary Tales For Children. I’ve read through the whole thing quite a few times, lol.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Oh! The House That Crack Built… we saw that in a book store about 8 years ago, and we still occasionally laugh about it! “This is the policeman walking his beat, this is the junkie feeling the heat”. Or something like that. Yikes!
And, I received Love You Forever from my best friends mother. I wasn’t sure which was weirder, the book or the fact that she gave it to me.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:59 am
@ Matthew, Atomic Spike: I’m pretty sure the Scary Stories series was meant to scare, not traumatize (although I don’t know what the heck the illustrator, Gammell, was thinking-maybe he wanted to traumatize).
@ Superdoctorchaos: Thanks…I think?
@ Melz: I remember that one. It didn’t frighten me as much as others, but I do remember having nightmares about the illustration.
@ Diasdiem: I don’t know, Diasdiem, Seuss had some pretty disturbing parts as well. After all, how spoiled do ham and eggs have to be to turn green?
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:54 am
Eric Says:
April 21st, 2009 at 9:38 pm
I was expecting the bible to be #1:
“do everything we tell you with unquestioning obeedience, or our all-loving god will cast you into fire and torture you for eternity”
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:45 am
So I totally remember reading Outside Over There as a kid and it completely freaking me out. I think it was the art work as much as anything, that lil pic up there gives me the willies. Never realized the connection to The Labrynth thouhgh, which oddly, is one of my top 5 all time favorite movies.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:12 am
Great article! Whoa, is Alfie’s Home actually available anywhere? Holy hell.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:04 am
…wow.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:00 am
[...] 10 Great books for Traumatizing children - [Cracked] [...]
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:00 am
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2WOV3L9EP5OQJ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Found this review on Amazon.com in response to the book “The House that Crack Built.” This person is really good at talking down to people. What they are basically saying is: I went to the ghetto to save the people who have little hope to survive. Thankfully the kids were really into this book about drugs.
In other words, they are glad they don’t live in the ghetto and like pointing out why to other people.
Another thing, most of these books get good reviews on Amazon.com. That’s pretty screwed up.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:51 am
lololol
I read Alfie’s home a few years back. It is horrifically amazing. xD You can probably find scans of it somewhere, it’s hilarious. =D
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:50 am
holy shit!
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:21 am
“It’s like if Requiem For a Dream ended with a big tea party/dance number.”
I thought it did end with a big tea party and dance number,
only that the “tea” was some heron,
and the “dance number” was Alicia Witt and Jennifer Connelly
doing Ass-to-Ass with a big black dildo. Great scene.
These authors have inspired me to take on a children’s book of my own and none of you muggs better steal my shit.
It’s gonna be called “Griselda the Fairy Godmother” and it takes place in Miami Florida during 1980-1983. This fairy godmother brings Columbian magical dust to the sleepy town of Miami and it makes everybody happy, horny, and rich.
But as time goes by, rival Columbian factions and the DEA don’t know what to do about Griselda as she keeps killing the Fairy Dust competition and getting away with it. Then she fucked around and ordered a hit on an relative of another Fairy Godfather name Pablo.
Griselda moves to California and ends up in Prison.
In the sequel, A young crack hustler named Black Charles falls in love with Griselda during her incarceration and he becomes the new Oakland King of Magical Fairy Dust for a number of years, thanks to her connections. But Griselda pushed his limits too far when she orchestrated the kidnapping of Prince John John (the son of the fallen King), and the plan ultimately failed when a patrol car happened to pass by at the moment of the kidnap.
Griselda is eventually released from prison after serving 20 years and deported to Columbia. There is still a 4 million dollar contract on her head.
The End.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:21 am
there is no way that last one was real. at least im hoping not. holy god.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:20 am
Is Pokemon still popular anymore?
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:12 am
i really really want to read alfie’s home
and if your reading this alfie your life and home are really fucked up man
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:11 am
I love when the columnists get back to the Cracked roots and make lists. Keep em coming please.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:00 am
Does When The Wind Blows (by Raymond Briggs, who also did The Snowman, if you’ve heard of that in America) count as a children’s book?
Also, I would personally like to read #7 and #2. I’ll need to procure myself a child, so I can pretend I am buying them for it.
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:21 am
Oh, and modern children are pathetic. Way too easily scared.
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:14 am
Some weird books.
Strangely enough, I don’t have any stories about traumatizing books to share. Probably because I loved that sort of thing when I was a kid. Scary Stories? Absolutely loved that series. I just wish I could remember the titles of the books I read. I need to look into this Edward Gorey fellow…
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:06 am
lolzorg. Loved the last line.
Great stuff
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:57 am
wow…that really is some fucked-up shit. i only read one book whne i was a kid that traumatized me. it wasn’t even the story that scared me. the people in teh book had no faces! there were just holes in the middle of their heads. you could see the sky though them and everything. i hated it so much that i took it and threw it way in the back of this really big hall closet. and i didn’t go in that closet for years. i have no idea what happened to the book. i wish i could find it, though.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:48 am
I love you Swaim, you’re my hero
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:46 am
YES! The one I sent in was in FIRST! My life is now, officially, complete.
Wait, I lied. I need to read that Scarey Stories book for my life to officially be complete. Damn.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:26 am
Wasn’t Cohen (writer of Alfie’s Home) a member of the “National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality”?
In other words, he’s one of those people who think that homosexuality can be “cured” through therapy and that the only reason why people develop these so-called “tendencies” is because they weren’t loved enough by their daddy.
And honestly, if that were true… wouldn’t that make just about everyone on the planet gay?
IMO, there are two Nazi books on the list.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:16 am
OK, article read now! I think I might have read the Hiroshima one as a kid… I read some book about Hiroshima at age 7 or 8 anyway.
There’s a Swedish children’s book about how babies are made. It is MOST disturbing. Avoid it at all means… I don’t know the title so just avoid anything Swedish, children’s, book or how babies are made.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:13 am
Am I the only one who glanced the cover for book #5 and read the author’s name as ‘Be More careful”‘ because lets face it, if mummy is going off to fucking lala fairy land, you probably want to be careful, or she’ll call her brother, Uncle Michael who is both the bloke from Alfies Home, and the handicapped ‘black’ child prodigy from #9 who will give you a glass of Jesus Juice and essentially turn you into the Drunken Daddy from #8 after he takes you to the House That Cra(ck|p music) Built.
Just a thought…
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:59 am
@Signe: Hell yes, I grew up on my mom’s Edward Gorey collection. It might explain a lot about my current development.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:58 am
Wow. These are all kinds of special.
Additionally has anyone ever read The Boy who Kicked Pigs? It’s a book for… uh, children? by the British actor Tom Baker and reads like a cross between Roald Dahl and Jhonen Vasquez. That the titular Boy gets his face eaten off by rats at the climax of the book should be fairly indicative of the tone.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:58 am
I didn’t read the article yet, but I saw you mentioned Edward Gorey. I fucking worship him! I wouldn’t recommend it to children though…
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:52 am
lets be honest here he wouldn’t be that tall if he was chinese would he?
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:50 am
Love that image from #9. It uses vaguely-derogatory terms like “boozers” and “fat kids,” then tries to be polite and says “athletes,” when it clearly seems to mean “black people.”
For God’s sake, the picture’s of a black man hitting his head on the top of a doorframe because he’s so tall. How else is that supposed to be taken?
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:45 am
@Chitter
That athlete pictured is disabled coz he’s black.
Did i take that too far?
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:26 am
@Viergacht
The Berenstain Bears Have A Domestic Disturbance?
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:21 am
How the hell did they spin athletes and child prodigies as being “disabled”? On the plus side, I guess my glue huffing gets me a handicapped parking permit.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:16 am
“The House That Crack Built” LOL!!!
I pissed my pants when i read that.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:13 am
Oh, come on. A book by Nazis? Too obvious.
The great thing is that the other books are made by people who thought they are doing something good. The road to hell indeed.
And the disabled people book’s list of ‘disabled’ people is pretty WTF-worthy. Also, does Alfie grow up to be, you know, Alfie (from the movie)? That would explain a lot.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:04 am
GREAT article. I’ve got a book about parental alcoholism I bought just because it stars adorably-drawn bears. If you can’t laugh at an alcoholic bear beating his wife and causing his cubs to turn to alcoholism themselves (and wearing black leather jackets, that seems to be kid’s book shorthand for boozing) what CAN you laugh at? I’ve got to get that horse one.
My personal kindertrauma was a book about a little girl who rescued a newborn kitten, which sounds sweet enough . . . except the girl is a pathological liar who begins to suffer a psychotic breakdown and thinks she’s a witch and the cat is a hateful demon that tells her to do bad things.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:52 am
Thank you for holding up “the Giving Tree” as the touchstone for just how disturbing a children’s book can really be… it really is a new, fresh hell every time I have to accept that book is really out there.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:36 am
I’m pretty sure most of these books fall under the category of “bibliotherapy”, and so would most definitely be traumatizing for kids with normal lives, but are meant to help kids with fucked up parents or whatever. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that most of the authors have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about, and just make it as twisted as possible.
Also… Cautionary Tales for Children is fantastic for its “HAHA JUST KIDDING!!….but seriously….” attitude.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:35 am
LOL, traumatizing kids is so cool!
RT
http://www.privacy.pro.tc
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:25 am
Anyone read Peter and the Wolf? The cute duck gets eaten by the big wolf, then Peter half hangs the wolf, and then they all go on a lovely celebration march to the zoo, and the story tells you that “if you listened very carefully, you could still hear the duck quacking inside the wolf’s stomach.” Now that is fucking traumatizing.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:21 am
Holy shit, I’ve actually seen Alfie’s Home. I’m just glad that somebody else knows it exists and that I’m not making this shit up
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:16 am
I don’t know, I kinda wished I’d known other peoples parents weren’t great when I was kid. Agree that childrens books is a poor way to go about it though.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:11 am
@ KittyGoMeowzah: I still remember (with fear) the man with the shears from a German preschool I went to! What were they thinking? At least now I can prove to my parents that it’s real…
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:11 am
This article is awesome. I was looking at a few of them online last week. I read most of the Alfie one, yeah… Let’s just leave it at that.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:07 am
This is why parents should probably stick with Dr. Seuss.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:06 am
The Scary Stories series of books did have pretty horrifying art. Anyone remember the story of the girl with the boil on her cheek that exploded and poured forth baby spiders? The art for that story was SO FUCKING MESSED UP. I had nightmares about that fucking picture.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:04 am
Totally agree with the intro. Love You Forever was creepy. Especially later where it depicts the mother crawling along the floor to her son’s bed. For traumatizing though, you can’t go wrong with the early, unedited, unredacted versions of old fairy tales. Where the wolf kills grandma and feeds her to Little Red Riding Hood, before making her undress and get into bed with him. Or where the evil stepmother cuts off one of the stepsister’s heel and toes in an effort to make her foot fit into the glass slipper.
I remember when I was a kid some parent raising a huge stink about the first Where’s Waldo book, the scene at the beach, because the early versions had this kid sticking an ice cream cone on a topless sunbather’s back, making her rear up so you got like a tiny, rear three-quarter side view of a boob. Kinda amazing when you consider there’s all this garbage out there.
Granted, this is the sort of children’s book I’d probably write. It’d be called “There is No Santa and the Easter Bunny’s Dead.” The whole book would be about how Santa is just a story and it’s really their parents, and the guy whose lap they sat on at the mall is probably a drunken hobo on the sex offender registry in a fake beard. Then on the last page, to deal with the Easter Bunny being dead, I’d just have a photo of my cat holding a rabbit that she’d caught in her mouth.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:03 am
My grandmother read me “Shock Headed Peter”, or “Strumwel Peter” and a host of other German stories when I was a kid and my mother banned her from reading to me again. I’m still terrified of the man with the shears cutting off my thumbs…
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:59 am
I’m very surprised that “Shock Headed Peter” didn’t make the list. Now THAT was a book that would ensure you wouldn’t play with matches or overeat… or undereat… or leave the house.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:54 am
Some of those were a whole heap of insane, but I disagree with the Hillare Belloc entry. I was given ‘Cautionary Tales’ by my grandad ages ago and not only are they greatly entertaining, they do just as the title suggests. For example, though the temptation to poke my arm through the bars of the lion enclosure at the zoo was often strong, thanks to the tale of poor Jim who was eaten bit by bit until only his head was left, I managed to resist.
Who knows what would have become of me without Mr Bellocs invaluable & practical advice?!
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:50 am
I cried a little when I read this. What horrible books to read to children. But then I realized that I don’t have any kids, but if I did, I would make them read every one of these books to me. Now I am happy again. I am not a horrible father, just a horrible person, because I don’t have children! YAY!
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:50 am
Hahahaha… thanks for the recommendations.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:39 am
I think that “The Moose with Loose Poops” should get an honorable mention. Don’t believe me? Check out the publisher’s site: http://www.hippocraticpress.com/books/the-moose-with-loose-poops/index.shtml
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:38 am
The books on the list were ill-conceived, they’re meant to be educational but they come off as disturbing instead. Scary Stories is a series of creepy-ass stories meant to scare the crap out of you…hence the title (it couldn’t have been more obvious than if they named them “Read this and you’ll wet the bed!”). So, no, the Scary Stories books don’t fit into the same category as the one’s on Swaim’s list.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:37 am
Yes, books are bad!
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:31 am
O.K., there are some really terrifying books out there. I initially thought that the book written by the plastic surgeon about how mommy now looks different should be on the list too, but these are much scarier than thinking about mommy’s boob job. Thanx Swaimmy. Thanx for another sleepless night. I think I will try to read myself to sleep with the timeless children’s classic. “Everybody poops.”
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:25 am
I don’t think this is a very funny article. I think something like Hiroshima is very important for children to learn about, and I wish I’d had a book called ‘I wish daddy didn’t drink so much’ as a child. It would have made me feel like I wasn’t alone in wishing that.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:21 am
spiffing article as usual from the Swaim, High Templar of the cracked cult.
how are we supposed to pronounce swaim though?
is it said “SWAM” like SPAM? or HAM? or JAM? or , or, IFLAM?
or is it pronounced “SWA”-”HEEM” with an indian flavour?
or just “SWAYME” like patrick swayme? i think in his next video
we will require some swaim-flavoured dirty dancing.
“swaim-flavoured” i like that =)
nonetheless, you’ve got to keep an eye on him though…
Severe
Werewolf
Attacks
In
Michigan
coincidence??
keep your eyes open out there people …
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:20 am
I’m off to look for “Cautionary Tales For Children” and “The Gashlycrumb Tinies”. For me, not my kids. They look kind of cool and very collectable.
As hard as they may try, not of these authors will ever out do the Brothers Grimm for bloodthirsty creepiness.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:18 am
uhhh, scary stories to tell in the dark, i read one book, was fucking horrified, and then i read more, what the hell was (is) wrong with me?
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:18 am
Incredible. Thank you for restoring my belief in the humor of the blog articles. Gladstone almost had pushed it beyond saving.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:14 am
@Melissa - The Scary Stories books were intended to be traumatizing. These other books weren’t. I guess one could argue Alvin Schwartz was trying to teach us all folklore, but it’s hard when you’re skipping pages because you don’t want to see the illustrations.
Some of the Shel Silverstein drawings are pretty fucked up as well.
Another entry for this list: No-No the Seal. He’s a seal that gets molested. It’s pretty much exactly as horrifying as it sounds.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:07 am
Yeah! I remember Scary Stories. That was freaky shit for a kid, and the pictures, pictures of demon-like shit. Very scary for children.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:02 am
Those scary stories books were the shit. Anyone remember the Viper?
“I came to vash and vipe your vindows.”
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:57 am
I gotta find those books, BRB
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:56 am
@rvish
Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is being made into a movie. Look up the trailer on youtube. It looks superawesome. I wish a giant pancake with syrup would crush *my* office.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:38 am
Scary Strories To Tell IN The Dark, fuck yeah, I remember those. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the horrifying art.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:33 am
You gotta love how the paint huffer is your stereotypical punk.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:19 am
and they wonder why kids dont read today? omg, that was disturbing on so many levels. thanks swaim for sharing with us these visions of horror. btw you rock as always.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:15 am
Ah, Latawnya the Naughty Horse. I remember this one when Something Awful got a hold of it. Not only are the horse names bad, I think they’re the names of the author’s children, namely because their mother is named Sylvia (the person who wrote it is named Sylvia Scott Gibson). Normally I wouldn’t read too much into it, but the legendary badness of this book has made me think otherwise.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:46 am
I think I’ll go buy Cautionary Tales, RIGHT NOW!!!
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:40 am
In the same vein as #4:
A comic book called ‘The Girl Who Loved The Swastika’.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:38 am
Awesome Article. It’s baffling what some people think will do any good to a children’s mind.
Wilhelm Busch’s “Max und Moritz” would have also perfectly fitted in here. It’s probably the most popular german children’s tale of all time. It is about two kids who play horrible pranks to everyone and then get killed in a really brutal way. The other works of him were also really creepy.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:19 am
I want to give that six year old melissa a big hug, but not in an Uncle Alfie way.
Although…
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:04 am
Gotta love mentally scarring children!
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:51 am
@ Melissa - Holy shit, I know. Those books were so scary. I wasn’t really traumatized, but it still fucked me up. Now, I see horrific things and don’t even bat an eye.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:39 am
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/33522/
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:26 am
Without the Scary Stories series, this list is no good. Sorry.
For those of you who have never read this series, click if you dare:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scary_Stories
This article isn’t complete, but there’s no way I’m clicking any other sites to give more information.
My first grade teacher read those books to my class, and I was never the same. I could barely sleep at night. I was afraid of my toys (they had a story about a corn husk doll skinning a farm hand). Between the story and the picture of “the scarecrow”, it took me several years to be comfortable with dolls and stuffed animals in my room after dark, and by the time I was okay with them, I had grown out of that stage.
Like I said, I could barely sleep at night, and with little sleep, a six year old does very poorly. From what I’ve been told, I had a pretty rapid transformation from outgoing to very withdrawn. In fact, my parents were so worried they put me in therapy.
Therapy really didn’t help me. They tried, but at the time, I had no idea how to vocalize why I was so scared; plus, I felt like a baby and idiot for letting a book affect me so much.
I just couldn’t deal with the concept of murder (or fictional murder). At night, I’d lie awake, afraid that if I shut my eyes, someone would skin me, slash my throat, or cut off my hands. I really didn’t want to wake up, covered in my own blood and/or a monster standing me-holding a knife. Of course, staying awake didn’t lessen my fears.
If someone did come to kill me, I knew a little girl wearing a barbie nightgown had a very little chance of surviving; however, my staying awake rationale was this:
Being awake meant I had time run and wake up my parents; and they would protect me (unless the murderer entered through the bedroom door, but I did have a canopy bed-minus the canopy…not enough space for it; so at least, I could unscrew a column-very light weight- and go down fighting. Had to be awake for that too though.)
As you can see, I was a bit traumatized. Though I didn’t know who Stephen King was at the time, I ended up using his techniques to diminish my fears. I started telling my own horror stories. I figured I could control at least a few monsters out there, and maybe, they’d start to be less scary.
Eventually, the plan worked, and writing stories entered my blood stream. Even if no one else likes them, my stories make me happy.
Still….I would never want to go through that again. This book is (or very near) the top of almost all challenge and banned books in school, and I’m okay with this one being banned. Goosebumps…and other juvenile horror stories don’t even begin to compare.
In conclusion, a childhood traumatizing book list is not complete without Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories. By all possible means, keep your kids away from it….unless you enjoy paying therapy bills.
Oh, and Stephen Gammell, did you research serial killer crime scenes for your drawings? Because, I’m pretty sure Charles Manson would be very impressed with your work.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:26 am
Uh, you guys do know that human civilization as we know it is most well and certainly fucked, right? If we honestly looked at things here, we’d be wishing that the goddamn MOON would crash into the earth and eliminate the blight-that-is-us from infecting the rest of the universe…Seriously, let’s just kill ourselves off and feel good that we went out doing at least one thing right. Our species is garbage. Just look at a mere 10 examples of our writing. We laugh at these things because we know they are true…
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:19 am
I actually had the story of the kid that ran away from his nurse and got eaten by a lion read to me a number of times. The book was pulled out now and then by some overzealous sibling.
I remember it rhymed. Rhymed while they described how the lion ate the little boy from the toes up leaving only is head - and there’s a picture…
Still shudder at the memory…
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:35 am
@Alex. My cousin, who are very sheltered, have a large book of censored fairy tales. It is very disturbing and complety ruins any sort of message they once had.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:22 am
Wow…after reading #4 I was wondering how you were going to top that one…but…yeah. Wow. But I think #2 is intentionally creepy in a (like someone already said) Roald Dahl/Neil Gaiman way - some kids (like some adults) actually enjoy scary stuff in their entertainment.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:15 am
Truth be told, most classical children’s tales are pretty damn horrific if you think a little about what’s going on in there. Little Red Riding Hood - wolf gets sliced, stuffed with rocks, sewn up and thrown into a river to drown. Hansel and Gretel - a cannibalistic witch gets burned alive. And I’m sure every country has its less known tales of gore and horror. If those were rated like videogames and movies/tv shows they’s probably get an M or something close. Then again, most come from an Europe ridden with disease, poverty, wars and superstition, when death and violence were commonplace. The concept of unscarred childhood is a modern invention.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:59 am
Had me a right good Chuckle over theese…
Am a Mother from a country with a long tradition of Good books or children.
Have read thousand of pages for my sons and never seen books like that…Fortunatelly…
Hugs from Lilian in Stockholm Sweden
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:55 am
All of the bleeding hearts who are crying over the Japanese book should know that Japanese children are not taught about anything that Japan did during World War II. Things like Pearl Harbor, the rape of Nanking, the sexual enslavement of Korean women, and all of the torture and atrocities committed by the Japanese are tidily swept away so Japan can focus solely on their place as victims. The indoctrination into this mentality starts as young as possible.
The atomic bombs were a bad thing, that’s true, but buying into the Japanese mentality that they were murdered by the evil Americans is a step toward their view of themselves as innocent victims in World War II. Let’s not forget which country allied itself with Germany and sought to occupy and conquer its Asian neighbors before we have a collective pity party for the Japanese.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:43 am
Mom Blogs - Blogs for Moms…
…
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:35 am
While my wife and I were delivering newspapers last year, we played a CD of childrens songs for our son who rode with us. One night we were listening along with it and we heard this song:
The Fox went out on a chilly night
and prayed for the moon to give him light
for he’d many a mile to go that night before he reached the town-o
Town-o! Town-o!
He’d many a mile to go that night,
Before he reached the town-o!
He ran till he came to a great big bin,
The ducks and the geese were lying within,
Said “A couple of you will grease my chin,
Before I leave this town-o!”
Town-o! town-o!
“A couple of you will grease my chin,
Before I leave this Town-o!”
He grabbed the grey goose by the neck,
Slung the little one across his back,
He didn’t mind the quack-a-quack! quack!
And the legs all dangling down-o!
Down, O!, Down O!
No, he didn’t mind the quack-a-quack! quack!
And the legs all dangling down-o!
He ran till he came to his cozy den,
And there were the little ones, eight, nine, ten,
They said, “Daddy, daddy, better go there again,
‘Cause it must be a mighty fine town-o!”
Town-o, town-o!
They said, “Daddy, daddy, better go there again,
‘Cause it must be a mighty fine town-o!”
April 21st, 2009 at 11:56 pm
HOLY SHIT BALLS man…..when you asked for these kind of books on twitter i had NO idea this was going to be the result…those are intensely scary
April 21st, 2009 at 11:24 pm
10 children died while you wrote this because they didn’t read the books on this list. Good going
April 21st, 2009 at 11:18 pm
I read “Struwwelpeter” when I was small. It’s like that “Cautionary Tales For Children” I guess. Anyway, it scared the crap out of me.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:15 pm
I’ve heard of “Alfie’s Home,” and I think I read it on the Internet at one point. Definitely deserves the number 1 spot…a huge fucked up book.
Great read, Swaim.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:03 pm
“Outside Over There” was a great book. Not for my little brother. Definitely for me. But the threat needs to be modified over the years — got to move on from goblins to gremlins and Uruk Hai (whichever works best).
And you’re not counting the amazing ability of little children to think everything in the children’s section is for them. “Goosebumps” had their way of sneaking into the library bag. Slappy’s still scary. For fully illustrated stories, there’s also the one about the yellow ribbon….
(In case you’ve forgotten, it’s about a girl who wears a ribbon around her neck everyday; boy always wonders why; girl takes off the ribbon one day at his request and decapitates herself.)
April 21st, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Wow. Just. . . wow.
First, I must say that I LOVE the Edward Gorey references, including the Gashley Crumb Tinies pictorial reference at the top of the article, and the Edward Gorey mention at number 2 near the bottom.
I’m a first-edition book collector, and Edward Gorey is my favorite collectible author. I have TWO copies of the limited edition of Cautionary Tales (I’ll be putting one up on eBay next week–seriously!), and all I can say is: Yes! Edward Gorey DOES traumatize young people!
I have two daughters, ages 10 and 6, and I read to them from my Edward Gorey books when I can. (Granted, I HAVEN’T read to them _The Loathesome Couple_, which Andre Brown (Gorey’s personal friend and sometime publisher) himself reportedly hated because of its subject mattter.)
Great article. . . as always, SWAIM!!!
April 21st, 2009 at 10:44 pm
“Great, I’m surrounded by cripples. And you can get high by huffing paint? Who knew? Me, now. Awesome.”
April 21st, 2009 at 10:39 pm
That last one horrified me in ways I never imagined possible. How the fuck did it get approved?
April 21st, 2009 at 10:30 pm
We own Outside Over There, and I read it many times growing up. It’s a classic. If I remember correctly, it’s not exactly that the goblins collapsed from exhaustion; they turned into a babbling brook.
The real danger is it tells kids if they put on mommy’s nightgown and fall backwards out of the window, they can fly.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:18 pm
This article = FAIL. By the way, your Holocaust-related jokes are never funny and always end up being offensive.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:09 pm
The old German “children’s book” Struwwelpeter has them all beat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter
Excerpt:
The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb
One day Mamma said “Conrad dear,
I must go out and leave you here.
But mind now, Conrad, what I say,
Don’t suck your thumb while I’m away.
The great tall tailor always comes
To little boys who suck their thumbs;
And ere they dream what he’s about,
He takes his great sharp scissors out,
And cuts their thumbs clean off–and then,
You know, they never grow again.”
Mamma had scarcely turned her back,
The thumb was in, Alack! Alack!
The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissor-man.
Oh! children, see! the tailor’s come
And caught out little Suck-a-Thumb.
Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go;
And Conrad cries out “Oh! Oh! Oh!”
Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast,
That both his thumbs are off at last.
Mamma comes home: there Conrad stands,
And looks quite sad, and shows his hands;
“Ah!” said Mamma, “I knew he’d come
To naughty little Suck-a-Thumb.”
April 21st, 2009 at 10:06 pm
“Captain Peter Phile and his Adventures in Time”
Join the zany Captain Phile as he travels through time! Follow him to your parents bedroom 6 years ago and watch as you were sexily created! Then zoom 15 years into the future to take part in all your favorite pop stars’ lethal heroin overdoses! And finish your journey to watch as Peter flashes back to the present, in your bedroom closet, to wait for you to fall asleep so he can give you a magical, throbbing gift!
April 21st, 2009 at 10:01 pm
The Hiroshima book needs to be read by every kindergartener in America, so at least the next generation wont grow up having a rosy remembrance of such mass murder
April 21st, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Oh *dear* lord… This is terrifying.
Except Cautionary Tales, actually. I find that “Jim, Who ran away from his Nurse and was eaten by a Lion” ends up in a lot of compilation books of short stories for children. I loved it when I was a kid in the same way I loved Roald Dahl’s weird kids’ books.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Epic Win, Swaim. Hilariously funny.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Swaim: How did this article and
http://denofgeek.com/movies/238469/top_10_kids_films_that_traumatise_small_children.html
come out oin the same day?
April 21st, 2009 at 9:44 pm
So it’s not okay to get in bed naked with your uncle? Man, that book would have really helped my growth and development! Too bad, because I already hate myself!
April 21st, 2009 at 9:44 pm
This article surfaced a vague memory of a teacher reading The House That Crack Built… I think I was in third grade. I don’t remember it traumatizing me, but I do remember hating it for being so repetitive.
And I want you all to know that Love You Forever is still pretty popular. Or at least we sell it consistently at the bookstore where I work. And the people who buy it or ask after it always RAVE about how great it is, too, which is even creepier than the book itself.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:38 pm
I was expecting the bible to be #1:
“do everything we tell you with unquestioning obeedience, or our all-loving god will cast you into fire and torture you for eternity”
April 21st, 2009 at 9:38 pm
eep :S
April 21st, 2009 at 9:36 pm
I wish I was raised by two lesbians ::frantic googling:: Ah, there we go…….
I think I had a point when I started writing this, oh there it is! What is with these books about teenage girls trying everything to get laid. When I was in high school, it was hard enough to get some boob action, is this really what teenage girls are thinking?
April 21st, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Where is Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark?
The pictures in that traumatized me as a kid.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:31 pm
What about “Heather Has Two Mommies?” It teaches kids that it’s okay to be raised by lesbians; I have no idea what they were thinking.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:31 pm
my mom used to read Love You Forever to me….
…my god
April 21st, 2009 at 9:28 pm
I have two young children and I would never let them read this shit. Need to make a trip to the comic book store and buy them some Deadpool.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I am missing “Der Struwwelpeter” for its “Saw”-like cruelty.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Amazing. Simply amazing.
And also, best excuse ever for why I used video games for my learning device!
April 21st, 2009 at 8:59 pm
“Hiroshima no Pika” roughly means “Sparkle of Hiroshima”
April 21st, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Yikes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Hate_Everything_But_Boys
April 21st, 2009 at 8:49 pm
As soon as I read the title of this blog I was immediately reminded of this book I had as a kid called ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’.
The premise? All food comes from the sky. Breakfast, lunch and dinner; eggs and bacon and spaghetti and steak. Even the beverages fall like [more literal] rain.
The moral? Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. One day, you’re checking the weather/food network channel and overjoyed that todays lunch/midafternoon showers will be cheeseburgers and Bud Light. The next, giant pieces of french toast and downpours of scalding grits are flattening your homes and boiling your loved ones to death.
Come to think of it, that might explain my inherent uneasiness in the face of bad weather.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Damn, I remember Love You Forever.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Great article Michael, and I am ecstatic that you listened to and used my suggestion of the German books, FINALLY twitter was useful for something, well, now I can delete my account there, it has served its purpose.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:43 pm
http://www.passerelles-eje.info/dossiers/dossier_279_fiche+technique+%AB+petite+taupe+qui+voulait+savoir+qui+lui+avait+fait+sur+tete+%BB.html
Is a German kids’ book about a mole who gets shat on. The mole spends the entire time trying to figure out who shat on its head, discovers it was a dog, and then shits on the dog’s head.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:41 pm
i read all of these, and the leperchaun voices told me im super-duper normal!
April 21st, 2009 at 8:35 pm
The japanese book looks like the cruelest thing ever. I want to read it, and weep.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Just looked up Alfie’s Home and big surprise, look who wrote it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Cohen#Books_written
April 21st, 2009 at 8:30 pm
wow, just wow, except for one whoa.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I’m more surprised than anything else that more Edward Gorey books aren’t on here. I really am. Though even if they were, Alfie would still take first.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Wow…these are just…wow. Is Alfie’s home sold in fucking bookstores?
April 21st, 2009 at 8:18 pm
I am surprised these aren’t jokes