I remember sitting on the bus at age 10 and hearing the lady in front of me give a glowing endorsement about Hollywood wives and the promptly checking it out from the library.
I had a very mixed up picture of oral sex for several years after that.
Oh lordy, that reminds me of a book, no idea what the book was, that I read when I was 11 or 12 where a man, whose name was I think Maurice, had such an enormous penis that he damaged his lover’s internal organs with it.
This book was lying around the house! Mom! Dad! One of you traumatized me for life with that image!
It might have been by Harold Robbins. I’m not sure. Ick.
First, one “r” in Newbery. Figured that out last year, letting the world know :).
Second, I hadn’t thought about that angle in Despereaux, especially with the cartilage. Yeah, that’s kind of grim. But I think it’ll be all right.
Third, another great Newbery to read (although I can imagine being traumatized by it) is Holes. Totally weird, starts off seeming like it’s gonna be all character-building, but it’s really a tight bit of plotting and a very well-told story.
Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful A Wrinkle In Time is not all that traumatic, and it won a Newbery award.
Loved John Bellairs as a kid - creepy, but didn’t traumatize me. This:
…is from The Revenge of the Wizard’s Ghost. More Edward Gorey cover art!
As for what traumatized ME … I was nine, in 1987, when the book Communion came out. Jesus, THAT THING ON THE COVER. I was, of course, horridly fascinated, and read enough of it to scare myself sleepless. I recently found it in a used bookstore and paged through parts of it … it’s absurd, badly-written trash, naturally, but I’ll be damned if I don’t think of that image sometimes in the middle of the night and get a little creeped out.
My dad had a book called “The Politics of Cruelty.” It was a non fiction scholarly book that basically compiled various stories of people from Communist countries who had been tortured, raped, et cetera. The only one that really bothered me was this account from some Russian political prisoner about how they were trying to get a false confession out of him, and they locked him in a tiny cell that was too low to stand up in and too short to lie down in. On top of that, the cell was lit by a 2,000 watt light bulb. All of the stories about torture, beatings, rape, execution, I read without being bothered one bit. But that part about the cell that you couldn’t stand up in and couldn’t lie down in - it made me shiver just thinking about it. For years and years and years.
I went searching on Amazon for the book after you reminded me of it. I’m pretty sure the book (the one I remember the black velvet ribbon story from, anyway) is Tales for the Midnight Hour by J. B. Stamper.
Pretty sure this story is included in Ghosts and More Ghosts, which I mentioned upthread. Can’t find a title right now though.
The story in the book that always affected me most was the one about the radio show host who had himself chained to a bed in a spooky old house to give atmosphere to the scary story he was telling about the faceless monster from the swamps. Only he failed to take into account the power of belief created by all those radio listeners…
Yes! That’s it! Thanks, ellere. You’re a peach 
I forgot! Yes - I was a kid too - I can’t remember how old but this scared me to death for a long, long time.
I won’t read this again.
There was a Little Golden Book with a Sesame Street theme called “The Monster At The End Of The Book” or something. It is revealed early on that there is a monster at the end of the book.
Grover (the main character of the book) is unnerved by this (OMG Monster!), and does not want the reader to get to the end and reveal the monster. Grover spends the rest of the book PLEADING with the reader to not turn the page, threatening, cajoling, building elaborate barriers to page-turning… the book disturbed me on many levels.
One issue is how frantic Grover gets, and yet of course the reader just inevitably goes on turning pages. As a rather tense kid myself, I didn’t like seeing him come unglued. It also bugged me that the book had illustrations of things like brick walls (on one page there is an illustration of Grover frantically applies mortar and slaps bricks up in a stack trying to prevent the turning of a page). Instead of recognizing this as a witty way of breaking out of the typical book format, I felt like they were violating the sacred rules somehow. The equivalent of breaking the forth wall in a play, I guess. It wasn’t that Grover was addressing the reader, it was the construction of physical barriers (albeit just drawings, to the reader) that were supposed to be happening in real time as you read along.
I suppose I need a spoiler warning for those of you eager to go out and buy this literary treasure for yourself, but it turns out that the monster at the end of the book is, in fact, Grover himself. He is both relieved and embarrassed over all the fuss. But what lso bothered me is that I didn’t really think of Grover as a MONSTER. Cookie monster is a monster, sure. It’s part of his name. There were also other muppets which were readily identifiable as monsters by their horns, eyebrows, or behavior. They were a class unto themselves, not necessarily scary but noble in their own way. But Grover, to me, was just is just a furry creature with ridiculous habits. It didn’t seem right for him to usurp the label of monster.
I really disliked that book. I still do.
I’ve posted before about how my dad carelessly left his adult fiction mixed in with his Asimov and Heinlein books. So I read some pretty hardcore sci-fi/fantasy erotica when I was a pre-teen. I remember being shocked and fascinated, but not really upset.
As for Newberries, though - I read The Giver a few years ago and found it quite disturbing. Although it probably wouldn’t have bothered me as much when I was a kid.
Oh HELLS yeah. I remember this very vividly and since I, like you, was both a tense and ridiculously empathetic kid (didn’t you find yourself feeling horrible for causing Grover’s increasing panic?), this was not a book I think of fondly. I guess the lesson we were supposed to be learning was not to be afraid, since that which we feared turned out to be non-threatening, but sadly I never managed to get that far! I just learned not to turn the damn pages and avoid the fear in the first place.
I remember that book too, but I guessed the ending right at the beginning and so I just thought it was funny turning the pages.
Goodbye, Janette, Harold Robbins. I read the exact same book, for the exact same reason (MOM! WHY?!) at the exact same age. Maybe a smidge younger. There was also a really classy scene with the woman putting on a really sturdy cotton nightgown to avoid having it ripped off her by her lover, but he gets an extra harsh cat o’ nine tails and whips it off her anyway. THANKS FOR NOTHING, MOM.
I also read Stephen King’s IT at an inappropriately young age (9, I think) and had issues with shower drains for years afterward.
I’m thinking in retrospect that one of my junior high teachers might have been a bit of a perv. He used to lend me Harold Robbins books to read (the only one I remember the title of now was The Betsy, but there were several others). It was very strange, because there wasn’t ever any indication (at least to me) that there was a problem–it wasn’t like he tried anything else (though I think he had a rep for trying to look down girls’ shirts when he could get away with it). I was such an innocent that it never occurred to me to be disturbed by any of this. I rather liked the books, though some of the racier descriptions did make me a little oogy.
This. No movie, book or song, no painting, drawing, or dance, no expression of artistic or linguistic creativity has EVER made me cry.
Except that one.
I loved that book! Had a copy when I was really little and loved it; lost it at some point, and then a few years ago my girlfriend at the time (god bless her) found a copy at a garage sale and, knowing I loved it, bought it for me. I still have it and will never lose it again!
Anything approaching normal sex didn’t bother me. Giant-penis-dude causing mayhem and possibly an emergency room visit was a different story! 
I didn’t know anyone else even KNEW about this book! I recently purchased an old copy and read it to my (then 7-year-old) son… I have the same aversion to firecrackers. As much as the book taught good lessons, and educated me about guide dogs, it scared the snot out of me.
On another note, I recall reading Are you there, God, it’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume in 4th grade, in an effort to gain insight into the female species. I had a vision of Margaret rubbing a hairy brown mole on her thigh, which was her 'special place." I was eventually able to gain better insight and a keener sense of anatomy, but I can still recall the puzzlement and horror of that image.
Oh lord, that thing scared the crap out of me, I was about 7when it came out. It still sort of does, so I’m not clicking on your link.
I think I was under the vague impression it was a true story, for some reason, which scared me even more.