6 Kids Books With Not-Even-Hidden F**ked Up Messages

Of course, nothing bad happens to Arnold, but that doesn't really change the fact that sneaking into a child's digestive system without their knowledge is creepy as all get out. Even creepier, this wasn't the only time Frizzle turned her students into guinea pigs without telling them what was happening. She did the same thing to Keesha ...

Scholastic Press

... and Wanda ...

Scholastic Press
The only way this could be more shady is she wrote "Free Candy" on the side of the bus.

The worst part of it all is that Ms. Frizzle is an authority figure with complete access to these kids for up to eight hours a day. And while she does teach them a lot about the world, she's also hammering into her class' heads that consent isn't all that important as long as you're learning something, which is exactly how real-life mad scientists behave.

As we pointed out before, George is actually an ape, not a monkey, and when apes get pissed off, the thing they mostly start to get curious about is how humans would look without faces. But George goes along with his kidnapping because he's curious as to what will happen, as his name betrays.

When George arrives in his new home, the first thing the Man in the Yellow Hat does is overfeed him and let him smoke a pipe until he feels "very tired," which is starting to sound more and more like testimony from a child abduction case than the plot of a picture book.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
"Just go with it, kid. There's a balloon in it for you later!"

The next day, George plays with a telephone and mistakenly calls the fire department (whose number is apparently 1234567). When they burst into his home and see there's no fire, they arrest little George. And let that be lesson to you, kids: If you ever find yourself trapped in the home of an oddly-costumed man who tries to subdue you with drugs and you call the police, you will go to jail.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Why does this fire department have a jail cell, again?

See, the ugly duckling isn't merely teased for its looks. It gets "bitten and pushed and made fun of" by every animal it encounters, including its brothers and sisters, who wish their sibling was eaten by a cat. Meanwhile, his mother "wished he had never been born," presumably very loudly over dinner after several glasses of wine. This is one of the most fucked up things you can say to a person, let alone a child.

Walt Disney
Next to "Santa killed himself because of you."

Not being able to cope with the abuse, the ugly duckling eventually decides to commit suicide by approaching a bunch of swans, who it seems are the national guard / biker gang of the waterfowl world: "I will fly to those royal birds," he exclaimed, "and they will kill me, because I am so ugly, and dare to approach them ... better be killed by them than pecked by the ducks, beaten by the hens. This bit is usually omitted in most adaptations.

But after approaching the swans while yelling "Kill me," the duckling is shocked when no immediate death follows. Instead, the swans recognize a fellow swan in the rejected little bird and let him hang out with them. The "duckling" finally finds its people and gets over his depression (because it's THAT easy), thus suggesting that all his abuse would have been justified if he had been just a weird-looking duck.

Although we can't blame everyone's reaction to the ugly duckling. Look at what baby swans look like:

Markus Krotzsch/Wiki Commons
Look at these piles of garbage.

This pretty much sets the tone for the iffy moral of the story. See, the Cat does not give a shit about what anyone wants. He doesn't ask what the kids want to do, or even if they want to play with him. He up and declares that the house, which does not belong to him, is now their playground, and that he is the Emperor of Fun. And when the kids' fish refuses to participate in his home invasion, he fucking assaults it.

Random House, Houghton Mifflin
"Watch how you speak to me, or I'll brain you with this stick, you see?"

Later, the Cat invites two strangers who are clearly his meth pals into the house, and they immediately wreck the place. It's up to the kids to deal with this problem, because again, the Cat doesn't care -- he's just squatting there for the evening.

Random House, Houghton Mifflin
Meth: Turns your hair blue and stunts your growth.

Sure, the Cat does clean up the mess he's made in the end, but that's not the point, is it? If one of your friends kicked in the door to your apartment, had sex on your bed, but then cleaned the sheets for you, you'd still be angry, right? Imagine if you didn't even know that person, and that's what the kids in The Cat In The Hat are dealing with.

Random House, Houghton Mifflin
Oh yeah. This is definitely a sex thing for him.

Cutting loose with a bit of wild mayhem is fine every once in a while, but everyone involved has to be on board, or else you're forcing them into an uncomfortable and destructive situation. The Cat isn't the avatar of fun -- he's that cousin that shows up once every other year to crash at your house unannounced with a duffel bag full of heroin and some weird friends.

Winnie-The-Pooh is the classic tale of Christopher Robin, a child who spends his days in the Hundred Acre Wood with his stuffed animal friends, because he cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality. It was basically Toy Story, if Andy interacted with Woody and Buzz and went along on their adventures. Or rather, it's Toy Story if Sid, the burgeoning serial killer who mutilates Buzz and Woody, went along on their adventures. Because if you read the Winnie-The-Pooh books instead of only watching the Disney adaptations, it becomes clear that Christopher Robin is a damn sociopath.

The very first chapter of Winnie-The-Pooh shows Christopher Robin dragging Pooh down the stairs and deliberately bashing his head against every single step. We're told that this is the only way Pooh knows how to go down stairs, because he is literally unable to think of any alternative, thanks to all the skull-bashing.

Methuen & Co. Ltd.
His name was Edward, but he forgot by the bottom.

Later on in the story, Pooh gets his head stuck in a jar of honey, which is a familiar scene for fans. However, rather than turning into a charming sequence of Pooh's friends gathering around trying to get him unstuck, this becomes a protracted carnival of misery, as the sentient stuffed animal struggles to release himself while Christopher Robin laughs his ass off:

Suddenly Christopher Robin began to laugh ... and he laughed ... and he laughed ... and he laughed.

Yeah, about the third "laughed," there is the point where you realize you're dealing with a diseased brain. The little British goblin makes no attempt to help, so Pooh is forced to smash his already-abused skull against a root until the jar finally breaks.

But the most chilling thing Christopher Robin does occurs in the second chapter, when Pooh gets wedged in Rabbit's hole (Pooh really can't be trusted to take care of himself, possibly because of all the head injuries). Christopher Robin inexplicably decides that the best way to free Pooh is to starve him. For a week. With all the warmth of a buzzard, Christopher Robin sits down in front of Pooh and reads to him while denying him food for days, until Pooh becomes emaciated enough to slide free of his prison. Because, you know, dirt holes can't possibly be dug out or anything.

Methuen & Co. Ltd.
He only brought the book to mask his erection.

Meanwhile, Rabbit had to spend days with Pooh's whistling asshole mounted in his kitchen. Because Christopher Robin treats his animal friends (who, in the story, are alive and have thoughts and feelings) like meaningless toys, the lesson here seems to be "Friends only exist for your amusement." Hey, speaking of which ...

Except, it really does seem like love is supposed to be a two-way street. If the tree is supposed to symbolize a parent, it's a terrible message for the kid. ("Your parents exist only to serve you, then die!") If it's supposed to symbolize any other kind of relationship, it's a terrible message for a future adult. ("Eventually, something will come along that bleeds you dry, and that's just how it is!") Without reciprocation, "love" is the perfect recipe for abuse, and The Giving Tree is clearly an example of abuse, because the boy in the story does not give one hammered shit about the tree.

Harper & Row
"What do you think I am, a MONEY tree? HAHA ... ha ... *sniff*
Oh god, love me! *sob*"

The two spend a lot of time together when the boy is young, but as soon as he starts getting interested in girls, he ditches the tree and fucks right off, only appearing later to ask for money. Because trees do not carry cash, the tree gives him apples to sell. More years pass with the boy nowhere to be seen. Then, he reappears asking for branches to build a house, presumably after taking a massive wash on the apple market.

Harper & Row
You're being an enabler, tree!

Finally, all that's left of the tree is its trunk, on which the boy, now an old man, comes waddling up to park his flabby ass in some shade. The book ends by saying that the tree was happy, and we're supposed to feel good about the fact that the little boy spent his entire life depleting the tree and never doing anything for it in return.

We suppose it's supposed to be about the joy of selflessness or something, but it really does seem like insisting that the tree was happy is like insisting that an 18th-Century woman trapped in a brutal arranged marriage was happy -- they didn't have any other choice, so they forced themselves to smile through their hopeless situation and wait for the sweet release of death. The Giving Tree is the picture book version of that.

For more things that were made for children that definitely should not have been made for children, check out 6 Insanely Dark Online Games For Young Children and 5 Insane Children's Books That Will Ruin Your Child.

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