10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children

Hiroshima No Pika

Who Cares About Disabled People?
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.I Wish Daddy Didn’t Drink So Much

Outside Over There

The House That Crack Built
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 filmSometimes My Mommy Gets Angry

The Poodle-Pug-Dachshund-Pinscher

Latawnya, The Naughty Horse, Learns to Say “No” to Drugs
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.Cautionary Tales For Children

Alfie’s Home
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.When not reading at a third grade level, Michael serves as head writer for and co-founder of Those Aren't Muskets!
