Kids books that made you cringe

Parent Cafe
1

<p>We all know that there are fabulous childrens books available.</p>

<p>I still have boxes downstairs and I have already given boxes and bags of them away to schools and shelters. But some I can’t bear to part with.</p>

<p>However- there are also those books that drove me nuts even though my kids seemed to have an affinity for some of them.</p>

<p>The Berenstain Bears for example. The storylines I thought were confusing- having dad and the kids go out for a walk and when they came back mom had, had a baby?
Talk about a blast from the past when you didn’t even mention that a woman was obviously pregnant.</p>

<p>I also didn’t like Curious George for some reason, even though it was a favorite of younger D’s and she received a big book as a gift from a teacher.</p>

<p>Although Magical Tales from Many lands is a beautiful book, my daughters favorite story " The Lemon Princess" night after night was wearing.
But last night, H & I were just talking about when she had to hear Really Rosie every night ( on tape) for well over a year, and how it was sad when she didn’t want it anymore. ( she slept with us- so we all heard it)</p>

<p>So fess up- did you get rid of those books as soon as your kids moved on?</p>

2

<p>I still have some of my favorites in my closet.</p>

<p>As soon as my Sister-in-law found out she was pregnant, my brother ran out and bought several books that we had deemed “must-haves”, including:</p>

<p>-Goodnight Moon
-Are You My Mother? (We still quote this now and then…heheh)
-Owen (Anyone remember this one? With the mouse and the yellow blanket?)
-Green Eggs and Ham
-Miss Rumpheus (my mom’s favorite ^_^)</p>

<p>Lots and lots of others I can’t seem to recall at the moment.</p>

3

<p>After the first two kids, I fell out of love with Dr. Seuss, specifically the Cat in the hat. What a rule breaker! I also don’t like Curious George for the same reason. Junie B Jones came out in time for my youngest to read, fortunately, he didn’t like her that much either. My oldest son LOVED goosebumps and we probably have about 50 of them boxed up. I read one and thought it was stupid but harmless. Daughter loved the Babysitters club, I felt the same way about them.</p>

4

<p>I hated the Richard Scarry books.</p>

5

<p>“I’ll Love you Forever” had a sweet message, but even when I was little I thought it was a little creepy.</p>

6

<p>I had forgotten about that one-
I agreed with the thought- but climbing in the window?
That was weird.</p>

7

<p>Richard Scarry books, a long buried bad memory. We tried to hide them unsuccessfully. I admit they were good vocabulary/general knowledge builders, in terms of types of construction equipment and the names of tools, etc…but what’s up with that weird worm? I wanted to squish him.</p>

<p>Magic Eyes – I was jealous because my kids could make the pictures pop 3-D and I couldn’t.</p>

8

<p>I must be the only parent in the country who didn’t enjoy reading Goodnight Moon. I usually read chapters from The Federalist Papers or *Ulysses *to the boys when they were little. Aw, just kidding. My personal favorites were Jamberry and anything by Dr. Suess. Did you notice that you can rap anything by the good doctor?</p>

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<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Richard Scarry’s Lowly Worm Word Book (A Chunky Book(R)): Richard Scarry: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Scarrys-Lowly-Worm-Chunky/dp/0394847288]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Scarrys-Lowly-Worm-Chunky/dp/0394847288)</p>

<p>my Ds had this one- I liked it</p>

<p>They really liked books they could carry around.</p>

<p>Reading the disney books that they always got from xmas from their grandparents was tedious too.
No matter how independent the author may have thought he/she was making the female character- it still seemed to be to be about " finding the right boy" in many of them.</p>

10

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<p>You mean GoldBug? I loved him. We’d look for him hiding on every page. Supposedly it developed reading skills, since they had to focus on the visuals, in detail. I liked the Richard Scarey books. </p>

<p>One of my favorites was “The Piggy in the Puddle.” Anybody remember that one?</p>

<p>“See the piggy,
See the puddle,
See the muddy little puddle,
See the piggy in the middle
Of the muddy little puddle.”</p>

11

<p>Not a book…but I don’t like “Three Blind Mice” ! And…as a baby gift…someone gave one of our kids an original piece of art by a fairly well known local artist of the farmer’s wife with a knife in her hand chasing after the 3 mice! Fortunately…it’s a little abstract!!!</p>

12

<p>Absolutely HATED, HATED, HATED the “Where’s Waldo” books. Why? Because the moment a new one came out, my children would get it (usually, from a relative with either no clue or with hatred for me in their heart), sit in my lap, and ask me to immediately point out the ever-elusive “Waldo”. </p>

<p>Darling Child: “Where’s Waldo, Daddy?”</p>

<p>Me: “I’m looking, honey. Give me a second…”</p>

<p>Darling Child: “Where’s Waldo, Daddy?”</p>

<p>Me: “Still looking. sweetheart”</p>

<p>Darling Child (slightly impatient): “WHERE’S WALDO, DADDY??!!”</p>

<p>Me (less patient, so I just point to some out of the way corner of the page): “Ah, there he is!” (and I quickly try to turn the page)</p>

<p>Not-so-much-Darling-anymore Child, stopping me from turning the page: “That’s not Waldo! Where is he!!!???”</p>

<p>Me (with all the patience of Job, but also with an Excedrin headache # 156): “Why don’t you go to bed now. I’ll look for him and point him out tomorrow”</p>

<p>Devil-Child: “NO, I want to see Waldo NOOOOOOW!”</p>

<p>Me (handing the book to Satan’s spawn before I do something that will get me in trouble with Children’s services): “Here, YOU find him!” Honey, we need to talk about JUNIOR! (shouted to my DW)"</p>

<p>Me, ten minutes later on the computer: “Dear Random House Books, Please take Waldo out in to the woods and make him lost forever…”</p>

13

<p>The Little Prince ends in a suicide as I recall. Nice message, huh?
Also, some of the poems and stories in the Book of Virtues/Moral Compass books are equally creepy and maudlin. And Pullman’s The Golden Compass has a decapitation early on as well if I remember it correctly.</p>

14

<p>I’ve always wondered about Peter Pan. An adult man who thinks he’s still a child, and shirks his responsibilities at work to go play games with children doesn’t seem like a very good protagonist for any story other that doesn’t end with said man getting locked up for being a pedophile.</p>

15

<p>Ditto on Berenstein Bears (yuck!) – I also hated the Clifford books; my daughter loved them, but fortunately DD never enjoyed being read to but was able to read on her own by age 4, so I didn’t have to spend too much time with those. </p>

<p>My son had a lovely illustrated book of The Selfish Giant received as a gift, which was his favorite at around age 4 or 5 – he wanted me to read it over and over and over. It was a gorgeous book, but we’re Jewish, and the illustrations in the book made it very clear that the little boy in the story was Jesus, so it was rather touchy to explain the allegory – no opportunity for me to simply skip past that [section</a> of text](<a href=“http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/SelGia.shtml]section”>Short Stories: The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde) on the final page when reading aloud. (I think my son’s Dad solved the dilemma by providing my son with more than a 5 year old ever needs to know about the biographical details of the life of the author, Oscar Wilde)</p>

16

<p>you’re right: I’ll love you forever is a little bit creepy haha</p>

17

<p>I despised The Little Engine that Could, and tried to drop sentences and paragraphs when I read it aloud without the kids knowing I was doing it. I agree on the Berenstein Bears, bad.</p>

<p>We all loved P. D. Eastman books, Go Dog Go, Are You My Mother, Flap Your Wings. Those I have put away for the future.</p>

18

<p>The worst children’s book I have ever encountered is *Hatchet<a href=“1987”>/i</a> by Gary Paulsen. My high school senior daughter has always agreed that Hatchet’s cringe factor is off the scale. Although Hatchet is marketed for young adults, I classify it as a children’s book, because it is routinely peddled to fourth through sixth graders, and to even younger students with YA-level reading skills. </p>

<p>This piece of slickly-conceived but atrociously-written tripe was clearly Paulsen’s attempt to ride the sociopolitical coattails of emboldened neocons campaigning to ram their fear/guilt/shame-based “family values” down children’s throats. Hatchet’s in-your-face moralistic message is that children who don’t grow up in a 1950s-vintage Leave-it-to-Beaverish nuclear family (mommy at home and daddy at work earning money to buy apples lovingly baked into pies by mommy) are unloved, unwanted, and destined to end up at the brink of death with only themselves to rely upon for survival. </p>

<p>Hatchet won a 1988 Newbery Honor award (!), and the book’s undeserved popularity spawned a 1990 made-for-TV movie, as well as four (count 'em) sequel novels, published between 1991 and 2003. </p>

<p>Hatchet was quickly embraced by neocon-controlled public school boards, like-minded public elementary school teachers, and the new and nauseatingly touchy-feely breed of public secondary school English teachers. My daughter’s sixth grade public school teacher required her class not only to read, but also to buy this piece of “literary” trash, which is exactly where my daughter’s copy ended up at the close of that school year.</p>

19

<p>It feels somewhat sacrilegious, but I’ll confess that I hated the entire series of “Little House on the Prairie” books. And I read 'em all aloud three times, once for each kid. I thought that Ma was a preachy, sappy pain in the rear. When she made Laura give a visiting friend her only toy, I wanted to throttle her.</p>

20

<p>Beatrix Potter - The Pie and the Patty-Pan gave me the creeps. Mouse pie!!</p>

<p>I only read it once and I believe it may be why my D is a vegetarian.</p>