Struwwelpeter. We had an English copy handed down by my grandfather. It’s insane.
Example: “Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug (“The Very Sad Tale with the Matches”): A girl plays with matches, accidentally ignites herself and burns to death. Only her cats mourn her.”
I still have my toddler books with the graphic Struwwelpeter running in with shears and cutting the thumbs off the boy who wouldn’t stop sucking them.
It’s a… “nostalgic” childhood trauma?
(“The Story of the Wild Huntsman”) is the only story not primarily focused on children. In it, a hare steals a hunter’s musket and eyeglasses and begins to hunt the hunter. In the ensuing chaos, the hare’s child is burned by hot coffee and the hunter jumps into a well.
lol wut?
With stories like this out there why are the only movies that get made recycled trash as they milk the 4th, 5th, 6th movies in a franchise?
I like the one where he wouldn’t eat his soup, and when he dies, his family leaves the soup on his grave
Holy shit
Sounds like a German kiss story to me hah.
Mentioned by Dwight in The Office!
Aww cute bunnies!
Watership down.
I just got the graphic novel for my ten year old niece. She likes the bunnies. I am a great uncle.
Yeah, definitely not kid friendly. I’d much rather give them a light-hearted story about puppies, like The Plague Dogs.
Not Old Yeller, or Where The Red Fern Grows?
No, those work too. I couldn’t possibly exclude examples of such lovely books for children.
The Yearling
The children’s bible. /s
Watership Down.
:(
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. That author’s imagination was daaaaark.
A lot of the original versions of the brothers Grimm stories. For example Cinderella, one of the sisters chops off bits of her feet so that she can try and get into the shoe Cinderella dropped. I think the Prince only figured it out because she’s dripping in blood.
A lot of those were meant to keep children in line. Also to teach girls that the only way they’ll be able to get ahead in life is to marry into money.
But it doesn’t pay off for the stepsister at all. She’s just bleeding, the story is about the triumph of The Grind- Cinderella stuck to virtue, hard work, etc.
Well the lessons there were a) don’t be a conniving bitch, and b) don’t be a stepmom or stepsister.
the Brothers Grimm versions were not the original versions of any of those fairytales! they were edgy remakes! idk why or how that thinking became so common or why I care so much!
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Where the Red Fern Grows (for older children)
Such a good book. But yeah even when at (all grown up) I read it to my son, I bawled
Coraline. The book is significantly creepier than the movie and manages to perfectly strike the uncanny valley
Is coralline supposed to be “kid friendly”? It’s one of the few books I wasn’t comfortable reading in alone in the dark, no way I let a kid read that
Yup, story goes that the publisher thought it was too scary for children, so Neil Gaiman, the author, told the publisher to read it to her daughter. The daughter said it wasn’t scary, and so it was published as a children’s book. Years later, the daughter said that she was actually scared but lied about it because she wanted to know the ending
The Giving Tree
You need this: https://www.topherpayne.com/giving-tree
This is great and all, but what I really need is an alternative picture of shel silverstein to put on the back of the book.
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That’s the scariest part.
Amazing!! Thanks for sharing!
He fixed some other fairly-problematic titles, too. Check them out on that same site :)
I think The Velveteen Rabbit is pretty fucked.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if they didn’t burn everything at the end. I mean, I get that sanitation in that situation was pretty darn important, but it was the author’s choice to choose something that required that outcome. That ending made me sad for a long time. Definitely didn’t know how to handle it. Not sure I can even now.
I was probably a child when I last read it, so I might have some details wrong, but here’s how I remember it:
A child is given a toy rabbit. A fairy visits the toy rabbit and gives it the gift of awareness. The child and the toy bond with each other and grow to love each other. Unfortunately, the child becomes dangerously ill, and after the sickness their possessions must be incinerated to prevent contamination. This includes the toy rabbit. However, the fairy arrives at the last minute, declaring that because the rabbit learned to love it was therefore a real rabbit, and with a wave of her wand transforms the toy into a living being and whisks it off to the woods were it lives happily ever after with the other rabbits.
So I guess my question is this - Do you think the velveteen rabbit and the fairy are real? Or is the fairy’s magic an invention of the child’s mind?
I think the narrative required the velveteen rabbit to be burned because it was so horrible. To the grown ups it’s just velveteen, but to the child it’s a dear friend. Even as children we know that being burned is horrible. So the child invents a solution where their toy can live happily ever after even after it’s thrown in the fire.
I think there’s definitely some Heaven and Hell symbolism to be had too. The velveteen rabbit was damned to hellfire unless it accepted love into its heart during its life. Then it is granted into the afterlife. In fact, you could say it was reincarnated into a higher spiritual form.
The story explores coping with loss as seen from the point of view of a child. Even though the velveteen rabbit was just a toy, the child has given it a soul. If you have a soul, when you die you go to the afterlife and live happily ever after. It’s a comforting story to a child, and one that many people around the world have believed throughout the ages.
I hadn’t thought about it being a coping mechanism for the child, the ‘fairy’ ‘rescuing’ the rabbit when it was just everything got burned anyways. I like the interpretation! Now I’m sad!
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Actually just the art alone does the traumatizing really.
Have you seen those bullshit rerelease editions? SAD!
I would say almost all of them. At least the classics
Little red riding hood - wolf eats your grandma.
Hansel and Gretel - forced out by stepmother, forced to kill a witch to survive.
Three little pigs - wolf kills your brother’s.The “classics” are really bad
No wonder we’re all empaths. And we used video games to escape our feelings.
= ADHD
A series of unfortunate events was pretty bad for me.
My grandpa kept buying them, and i read them because I didn’t know how to not reqd a book given to me, but they definitely taught me how to say no to a gift.
The worst part was the fatalism
Virtually anything with a Newberry Medal is highly likely to have a traumatizing beloved character death somewhere in it. Maniac Magee and Bridge to Terabithia were good examples from my childhood.
I guess bridge to terebinthia I read late enough that it wasn’t traumatizing, and the beautiful image of a room that lights up gold in the sunset stuck with me until today.
Otoh we got an audiobook with a picture of two kids smiling riding bicycles for the car ride on a trip to the beach one year, and like 30 minutes in, one of the kids died and that was awful.
The book in the “Little House on the Prairie” series- (the one where Laura gets married and has a baby) and their childless neighbors ask to buy their baby. Is that enough trauma by itself? No. Not quite. It’s the lack of empathy from Laura or her husband, they treat them so badly, like they’re dangerous.
