Books you loved as a kid, but seem very different as you read them to your own kids

Cafe Society
1

This thread

made me think of this question.

My two biggies are “Curious George” and “Barbar”

I loved, LOVED both of these book as a kid. I go to read “Curious George” to my kid. Curious George is kidnapped by the Man in the Yellow Hat! Which as well as being cruel is definitely illegal. Curious George gets to live in the Zoo at the end. Lucky George… he was swinging along in his native habitat till TMWTYH comes along and he ends up incarcerated.

“Barbar” is even more disturbing to me. Of course there’s the whole issue of Barbar’s mother getting shot before his eyes on page 2, but parent death is a constant in children’s literature. What really disturbs me is the “Europeanization” of Barbar. The cultural imperialism just makes me want to gag. And the portrayal of the African “savages” Ugh.

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I had nightmares about the rhinos in Babar when I was a kid.

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Berenstein Bears. Terrible.

4

I read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy as a kid, and loved it. I compared all fiction epics to my memory of it, and found them wanting.

They seemed haphazard, rambling, with strange roadblocks and a multitude of one-shot characters thrown randomly at the heroes, with whatever imagery happened to be floating around the author’s head at the time. Not like Tolkien’s masterpiece.

Seeing the first film adaptation inspired me to reread the whole trilogy. I found it haphazard, rambling, with strange roadblocks and a multitude of one-shot characters thrown randomly at the heroes, with whatever imagery happened to be floating around the author’s head at the time.

I had forgotten many of the fairly meaningless episodes in the books, which were wisely left out of the film.

Oh, well.

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Enid Blyton’s Famous Five. I adored these books as a kid. I so wanted to go on an adventure and have a picnic with lashings of ginger beer. They were banned from public libraries about 10 years ago (maybe more) and I was outraged, how dare they ban Enid!

I just reread one after finding it my mum’s basement. I was so disappointed it was sexist to the extreme, pompous and just plain silly. I really, really wish I hadn’t reread it because Enid was the one who got me hooked on reading as a wee thing. Spoilt all my memories.