Four of the worst children's books ever

[Miranda_]

This topic is to describe the utter creepiness of certain children's books, that are obviously designed to terrify children. Feel free to google these titles in order to scare yourself to death. In no particular order:

1. Love You Forever. Ugh. This book is the most creeptastic book I've ever read; it's supposed to signify a mother's undying love, but to me it was an example of a weird stalker mother who very likely brought up a serial killer by her obsessive love. I bet he never married, either; she sounds like the mother in law from hell.

2. The Giving Tree. When I first read this, after finding a copy at school, I thought that the point of the story was that once a parent gets too old, their child has to kill them. The tree basically sacrifices everything to her ungrateful brat, and he still wants to chop her down. Talk about unhealthy relationships.

3. Alfie's Home. Never read this as a child, thank goodness. It's just completely awful, and if any book should be burned on a bonfire, it should be this one. The weird uncle gets away with his crimes, and Alfie gets to be pressganged into believing that he's abnormal and has to be cured. This book is often in lists of this kind.

4. Latawnya The Naughty Horse Learns To Say No To Drugs. My Little Pony, this is not. Taking aside the fact that horses can't hold cigs and bottles with their hooves, it's kinda disturbing to even think of horses smoking drugs. What was the author thinking?! Even reading this as an adult, I thought this was terrible. I can't even imagine reading it to a child.

[TheHayleyDoll]

:LOL: That book is crazy. I found that image (along with other crazy kids books) here: 10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children | Cracked.com

Some of the other ones mentioned were there:

Alfie's Home:

And "Love You Forever" is here: 6 Popular Children's Books That Teach Kids Horrible Lessons | Cracked.com



^ Note the ladder. The kid lives on his own and the mother broke in at night. o_o

[eros]

Holy crap on toast! I can't believe the Alfie's Home book is even considered a children's book! Little children should not be reading this stuff!

[belladoggy]

Thanks for linking the Cracked articles, Hayley! I KNEW I had seen "Love You Forever" somewhere before.

I think I used to confuse "The Giving Tree" with "The Giver"...which is basically Brave New World for children, which children shouldn't really be reading (Brave New World, I mean. It gets dark.)

[TheHayleyDoll]

The Best Book of all Time-Alfie's Home

Images of the entire book. Read and enjoy.

I read The Giver in school when I was in grade 6 and I just remember it being really boring. xD

[Miranda_]

The Giving Tree, however, is a story about an abusive relationship; I much prefer this alternative ending: SASSY *** FRIEND - The Giving Tree - YouTube (Btw, mild swears)

[xVanillaRaex]

Well, that's horrifying D:

[Silent_Wolf]

The Giver gave me nightmares, more so than Brave New World ever did; well, not nightmares, but unpleasant concepts.

Brave New World, at the very least, had a few amusing parts.

The Giver just made me feel extremely depressed.

I'll Love You Forever could be good as a poem - but the illustrations for it could have been done far, far better and to be fair, yes, does make things look horrifically stalkerish and abusive. meep. o_o

[LancasterPrincess]

I agree with Wolfie about I'll Love You Forever. I grew up with that book, and I never once thought of the message ya'll are talking about. At that young of an age, all you see is that your mommy will love you forever, and lets face it, the message that no matter what mommy will love you is a good one, even if the illistrations are not.

I am baffled at the Alfie's Home book. Absolutely disgusting, but I suppose that if there's actually a market for that book, then that's the bigger disgust.

[LillyAwesome]

I don't think Alfie's Home should be a book for children.