Kids books that made you cringe

Parent Cafe
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<p>I haven’t seen or read Gary Paulsen’s “Hatchet” but there’s an important and longstanding discussion about the place for violence in children’s stories. Grimm’s fairy tales were nasty and undoctored, as real people told them; then Hans Christian Anderson wrote stories with Christian morality messages that worked out great. A poster above mentioned that Mother Goose rhymes were too violent in the forms they came down to her. </p>

<p>When Maurice Sendak first illustrated, “Where the Wild Things Are,” some parents didn’t like it because the illustrated monsters were scary, although in the end Max comes back having conquered them. Sendak was criticized tremendously when it first came out.</p>

<p>This revived discussion of an old essay by Bruno Bettelheim that supported reading the fairy tales again, indirectly supporting Sendak, saying that children already have fears and monsters. These stories are cathartic for them because the monsters are conquered, and don’t “introduce” anything that isn’t already lurking there in the kids’ thoughts already. It strengthens them each time they hear the hero triumph.</p>

<p>A few years ago, on recommendation of my D who admires the work of Neil Gaemon, I bought his book, “The Wolves in the Walls” illustrated by Dave McKean. He said he wrote it because, for children, there are already wolves in walls, so he latches onto that and brings it all out into the open for them, with a story that has a very satisfying resolution, but looks very dark from page to page. </p>

<p>I think you have to judge how you feel about storybooks that turn dark corners but come out more-than-okay. I know that I was able to engage a class of 7-year-olds for a solid hour with “Wolves in the Walls”, when that same class normally had a 20-minute attention span at most. Were they entranced or scared? They stayed with it for a very long time, working on the story lines. </p>

<p>I still wonder about this, especially as graphic novelists for young adults begin to try to write for children even younger. Thoughts, anyone? It’s a trend I’m following…</p>

22

<p>I hated The Pokey Little Puppy. Lllooonnnggg and repetitive-repetitive-repetitive. Also my in-laws brought my kids a book from Hawaii. It was a Hawaiian twist on the 3 Little Pigs, which meant the Pigs were being attacked by a shark. Didn’t make much sense, since the shark had to come on land to get them. Also it was sprinkled with Hawaiian words (I guess it was supposed to be cultural) that I couldn’t pronounce, when I got tired of explaining the words to the kids I just read them in English.</p>

23

<p>My parents gave my D four of the sappiest books–something about a little girl and a unicorn. (It’s probably been 20 years since I read them.) I never got rid of them b/c they are all inscribed “To _____ from Granma and Grampa” but they are really insipid…guess they didn’t read them before buying.</p>

<p>I used to like “The Little Engine that Could” but after reading it to 4 kids endless times…I am heartily sick of all the repetition!</p>

<p>*Lafalum–Ditto for Poky Little Puppy. Blech.</p>

24

<p>We bought a series of Sesame Steet books (years ago) at a garage sale. They were long and boring to read. I used to cringe when my children would choose them from the shelves. </p>

<p>My boys both LOVED “Where the Wild Things are.” My son as a high school freshman has a tee shirt that says, “wild thing” and has an illustration of Max. They also both loved the book, “Hatchet.” We read it aloud and they found it really exciting. It’s not the best book for girls, but my sons have been forced to read many books they couldn’t relate to at all that were “girlish.”</p>

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<p>I’d only let my daughter read the Berenstain Bears books at the library. She liked them but I didn’t want to spend a nickel on them. I think they are dreadful…poorly written and badly drawn (all the Bears have one expression each). They are the equivalent of a very bad sit-com, Married with Bears or something. </p>

<p>I despise Little Women because of Marmee. It’s apparently perfectly okay to expose your daughters to infectious diseases in the name of teaching them charity and I could <em>never</em> forgive her for letting Amy’s (?) birds suffer and die rather than give them food and water just to teach Amy not to be lazy. They always leave that part out in the movies. Fortunately, despite receiving a copy as a gift, my daughter never liked the beginning of the book and so didn’t read it. She reads many other Victorian or 30’s fiction (loves Georgette Heyer) but I’m glad I didn’t have to read Little Women to her. </p>

<p>She claims <em>my</em> reading of The Lord of the Rings was better than the movies but she’s a diplomat!</p>

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<p>Paying3, That’s Neil Gaiman. [Neil</a> Gaiman - Biography](<a href=“http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/About%20Neil/Biography]Neil”>http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/About%20Neil/Biography) Amazing Illustrator and author. I only heard about him about a year ago when I started buying the Adult graphic novels for our library and then I found that he has a huge body of work in all different gendre’s. I’ve never heard of the wolves in the walls but I looked it up and my libary owns it!</p>

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<p>^^thanks kathiep for mopping up my spelling. I mean, I am staring right at this book in front of my computer and still misspelled his name. Yeesh. Thank you!</p>

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<p>So no one remembers “The Piggy in the Puddle,” huh. It was one of my favorites.</p>

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<p>My first born loved trains, so we had “The Little Engine That Could” and several related books. I remember one Golden Book rip off of those that I could not stand, even though my son liked it. I think it was called Benji Engie, or maybe that was just the name of the main “character.” And it kept talking about the Slow Old Local. Try saying THAT quickly three times in a row!</p>

<p>Although I liked Green Eggs and Ham, I admit to skipping pages when they got that whole list of things going…</p>

<p>Another supposedly wonderful book that we disliked–my son and myself–was “Stuart Little.” It didn’t seem to have a real ending, just left you hanging. very disappointing…</p>

30

<p>Bullet did the fun books, whereas I was stuck with GO DOG GO…Fox in Sox</p>

<p>I have to admit I tried the skipping pages, but they had it memorized, so it would always take me longer because they would say “no, you skipped a page, and force me to go back”</p>

<p>Any of the bizzing, buzzing books where the child would press the button. I don’t think we ever read it, just spent time with them pressing the buttons. Of course I was stupid enough and bought more ea time they asked for one. :confused:</p>

<p>My favorite was I will love you forever</p>

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<p>My kids were freaked out by the Velveteen Rabbit. A plush toy that a boy dearly loves; boy gets some horrible disease (can anything be scarier than something called “scarlet fever”) - such that all his beloved lovies must be thrown into a fire. Good God. And then the rabbit’s only escape from immolation is that a fairy turns him into a real animal. And THAT’s supposed to be a happy ending?</p>

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<p>Egads…Bunny Foo Foo. Doesn’t it seem kind of mean to bop little field mice on the head? </p>

<p>Personally, I find the illustrations/artwork in Berenstain Bears annoying…and the books reminded me of going to the dentist. And I’m afraid the cobras in Rikki Tikki Tavi haunted me in my young nightmares for years…lol!</p>

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<p>I love the original versions of fairy tales and of books like Peter Pan and Tarzan before they’re disneyfied. They’re so much more exciting because they’re uninhibited… all of the wilder, crueler parts aren’t edited out. It’s like… it’s okay when everything doesn’t fit the moral, clean mold, I don’t know, but I wish somebody let me read Grimm’s fairy tales in their original format when I was younger. It would have been quite interesting :slight_smile: I’m reading them now</p>

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<p>There is a book of Carpathian fairy tales S inherited from H. I had to read some of the stories to 4 y/o S numerous times, the scarier the better( one particular favorite involved dog-headed creatures biting people’s heads off). No Poky Little Puppy for our boy. :slight_smile: S also enjoyed his parents’ rendition of LOTR and Treasure Island and his Gramma’s reading of Robinson Crusoe. The number one was of course Astrid Lindgren’s Carlson on the Roof( ultimate rule breaker and mischief maker, sadly not very well known in the US)</p>

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<p>gossip girl…lmao</p>

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<p>so many books…i think i have kept most of their favorites. shel silverstein, roald dahl were probably some of their favorites. i have some silly cardbook book that they used to love…can’t remember the name, but they wore them out! i bought two and stored them away. i remember part of the book…</p>

<p>i see a bump
oops the bump jumped
who’s under there?
it’s someone funny…
it’s my funny honey bunny!</p>

<p>a picture of a mommy bunny and her baby bunny playing peek-a-poo make this little rhyme complete!</p>

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<p>Waving hand I loved the Piggy in the Puddle. </p>

<p>Count me in as another loather of Berenstain Bear books. I even gave away the two that my son was given so I wouldn’t have to read them. Horrible pictures, horrible stories.</p>

<p>The other book I can’t stand is The Giving Tree. What kind of message is that? Give and give and give until there is nothing left of you? Total enabler. Yuck.</p>

<p>I don’t like Love You Forever, but I’ve managed to pretend it just doesn’t exist.</p>

<p>I’m not too crazy about Dr. Seuss, I like the words, I just hate the pictures. (That said Green Eggs and Ham was my favorite book when I was very young.)</p>

<p>The book for somewhat older kids I just don’t get is Pippi Longstocking. I thought they were boring.</p>

38

<p>By the time my second was ready for them, I had put Berenstain Bears on the “I won’t read it, you’ll have to learn to read it yourself” list. Yuck! Preachy, poorly drawn, bad syntax.
I loved Go Dog Go as much as the kids did. The worst was a book by some unknown author that our first took a liking to - the illustrations were kind of fun collages of fabric and other stuff but the text was dreadful. It got to the point where we could sit on the floor and hold the book overhead facing him and just recite the insipid rhymes “Easter eggs to color! What fun it is to do! Let’s paint them pretty colors, like Purple, Pink and Blue!”</p>

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<p>THE GIVING TREE- what a horrid book- givbe until you are a stump- blech</p>

<p>and this is a link about the book Love you forever
[The</a> Official Robert Munsch Website](<a href=“http://www.robertmunsch.com/books.cfm?bookid=40]The”>http://www.robertmunsch.com/books.cfm?bookid=40)
'“I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
as long as I’m living
my baby you’ll be.”</p>

<p>I made that up after my wife and I had two babies born dead. The song was my song to my dead babies. For a long time I had it in my head and I couldn’t even sing it because every time I tried to sing it I cried. It was very strange having a song in my head that I couldn’t sing.</p>

<p>For a long time it was just a song but one day, while telling stories at a big theatre at the University of Guelph, it occurred to me that I might be able to make a story around the song.</p>

<p>Out popped Love You Forever, pretty much the way it is in the book.</p>

<p>My regular publisher felt that it was not really a kid’s book and I ended up doing it with another publisher.</p>

<p>One day the publisher called up and said “This is very strange. It is selling very well in retirement communities in Arizona. It is selling in retirement communities where kids are illegal. This is supposed to be a children’s book. What is going on?”</p>

<p>“Grownups are buying it for grownups!”</p>

<p>In fact, it turned out that parents buy it for grandparents and grandparents buy it for parents and kids buy it for everybody and everybody buys it for kids.</p>

<p>As a matter of fact, everybody buys it for everybody. That’s why it sells a lot of copies. I think it’s my best book. So far it has sold about 15,000,000 copies.</p>

<p>Everybody makes up their own song for this book. I would like to put different versions of the song up on this site, now that the site has sound on it. If you send me your version, either as a tape or an audio file or a MR3 file, I will try to put it up in the LOVE YOU page. If lots of people send me their versions, I will not be able to put them all up, but I would like to hear them even if I can’t put them on the site.</p>

<p>The way I sing it in the story is just MY version. You are supposed to make up your own’</p>

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<p>just saw mathmom’s post on the giving tree!!</p>

<p>i remember at my ds preschool, there was a huge discussion about that book, some people thought it was sweet…at first…the they saw it was about giving till you die to someone who seems to care less</p>

<p>that book made me really angry and i actually sent a letter to the publisher</p>