Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Actually just the art alone does the traumatizing really.
Have you seen those bullshit rerelease editions? SAD!
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark sure the fuck isn’t a cuddly-looking bait-and-switch, but it is plainly aimed at a younger audience. Basically a collection of standard campfire stories and spooky e-mail forwards… with nightmare-fuel watercolor illustrations.
Coraline is pretty intense.
A quote from Neil Gaiman about his editor’s daughter, who served as the book’s first audience
I told her, “You know, we kind of have you to thank for all this, because you weren’t scared by it.” And she said, “Actually, I was terrified. But I wanted to know what happened next. I knew if I let anybody know I was scared, I wouldn’t find out.”
Antek by Bolesław Prus
Yeah we just gonna shove a kid in the oven for three Hail Marys
Charlotte’s Web.
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.
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!
Not a book, but the May 2022 edition of Majid magazine. Why? In one of the comics, Amoona looks straight up horrifying. I didn’t even mention the real controversy here (and honestly it’s undeserved).
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.
Did anybody else read tangerine as a kid? I still think about it pretty often and I’m 30.
My brother was assigned that in school and we had it in the RV on a camping trip, so I picked it up and read it one evening. Both the info on citrus growing, and the violence, are things I still remember. Fucked up.
Was it assigned reading? Where did you go to school? I’ve always wondered if that book made it into reading lists anywhere outside of Florida.
Yep, assigned reading in Florida
Hans Christian Andersen fables. At least it traumatised me long ago, unlike any other fairy tale books, which i had plenty.
The other night I read my son an old children’s book named “Prickly Pie”. He wasn’t traumatized by it but I could easily see a kid getting traumatized by in. In the story a young hedgehog decides to skip school and ends up being hog tied by a sly fox and almost cooked over a fire.
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.
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!
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 Little Match Girl.
I only got traumatized by movies as a kid. Never had any traumatic books, only good, interesting, or really fucking weird ones.
