Hal and Roger Hunt, from Willard Price’s “{Exotic Placename} Adventure” series: yeah, they were pretty cringeworthy - two clean-cut American teenagers go to savage places to collect animals and boss the subservient natives around.
In the same vein, the Curious George series always struck a raw nerve, even as a kid: the Man In The Yellow Hat goes to Africa, captures a perfectly content little monkey, gives him a pipe to smoke {!}, and then takes him back to civilised America. Once there, when not volunteering George for dangerous trips into space or pimping him to movie studios, he abandons him to his own devices for lengthy periods, whereupon George wanders off and gets into scrapes - which usually involve people forcing him to work for free, then and punishing him when he makes mistakes. And the monkey likes it. You could have fun picking the racial sub-text out of that series.
Beware! Beware! Be a very wary bear!
A heffalump or woozle is very confusle
A heffalump or woozle’s very sly- Sly! Sly! Sly!
They come in ones or twozles, but if they so choozles
Before your eyes you’ll see them multiply- Ply! Ply! Ply!
From the animated short Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. Music by the incomparable Richard and Robert Sherman. (The three original Pooh shorts were taken directly from the A.A. Milne books, and hewed closely to the Milne mythology. Like in the books, Heffalumps and Woozles were only figments of Pooh’s imagination, but the recent film Pooh’s Heffalump Movie has shown that Heffalumps are real, and friendly, not creepy. Eh.)
Okay, may not be a popular opinion, but I didn’t enjoy Dr Seuss - most specifically: Green Eggs and Ham. Only now as an adult do I realise they were the source of my vivid, recurring nightmares, where I was on a train on a very rickety track which breaks and I fall into the sea and nearly drown.
Since a few other posters cheated I’m going to also, and offer a book that I read only about a year ago
Harriet the Spy
This was one of the books I always meant to get to as a kid, it’s always front and center in libraries. It’s considered a classic of children’s literature. Several of my writer friends mentioned it as an important influence.
So I finally read it.
AHHHH! Harriet has to be one of the most unlikeable characters in all of children’s literature. She goes around writing mean things about everybody in her notebook. She never observes anything nice about anybody. She is cold, critical, unkind, vengeful, spoiled, self-centered and mean mean mean. When her friends finally find out how mean she is (they find the notebook) they are mean back and among her revenge plans (PLANS not fantasies) is to bite her best friend’s finger off.
I hope the sequel was something like “Harriet the Psychotherapy Patient”
The book Frederick always kind of bothered me. Frederick just seems like a lazy bum freeloading off the work of the other mice. He may have been able to provide art and poetry, but that won’t keep the other mice from starving during the winter. Surely Frederick could have been collecting and storing food while looking for his inspiration.
The Pippi Longstocking books. I think there were a few–I really disliked them. I think the idea of giving them to me was that it’s possible to achieve success among your peers even if you have freckles, red hair and big feet (I did not have big feet) but what I seem to have gotten from them is that happiness is assured when you have an unlimited supply of gold coins and a fascinating but absent parent who doesn’t care what you do.
But I guess that was just me. I was always running into people who loved those books.
This one didn’t bother me as a kid but reading it to my kids (and of course they loved it and wanted to hear it every night–I had to hide it) it really, really bugged me.
The Mary Poppins books. Julie Andrews she ain’t. In the books she’s a mean old shrew. I remember a couple of characters who broke off their own fingers and they turned into candy and the kids ate them. Also there’s a chapter in which little Michael finds a magic compass and gets attacked by a harpoon-wielding Eskimo and a stereotypical Red Indian. I remember being very grateful that my parents never hired a magical psychopath to take care of me and my sister.
Thank you Case Sensitive! I knew I wasn’t making that whole thing up.
NDP, sadly these were actual, real German fairy stories for kids, and they were terrifying! Lots of people being burned at the stake, rolled down hills in spiked barrels or pulled apart by galloping horses as part of the “happy” ending.
Thinking about it, I also hated “The Cat in The Hat” but that was only because my sister forced my poor mother to read it every night for 2 years, so I only ever got time for a chapter of my book. It’s actually quite a nice story.
I have never seen the “I Love You for Always” but I can say right now that it’s not going to be on my children’s bookcase while I draw breath. It’s the most f*cked up story.
Good heavens :eek: I had mercifully forgotten that book. Thanks for the reminder :mad: The memories are coming back now. Elizabeth Eliza. The piano that could only be played while sitting outside the window. Some lady from out of town who knew everything (i.e. had an IQ higher than a bag o’ rocks). I’m going to go bleach my brain now.
Little Match Girl / Little Mermaid - aren’t those both Hans Christian Anderson tales? That guy was really messed up. Unlike that happy, chirpy movie starring Danny Kaye. Most of his stories were horribly depressing, not entertaining, and not even educational. I think they were supposed to have a “moral”. Feh.
Anyone else ever read At The Back of the North Wind? I had sense enough to be depressed by that one as a child. Recently I reread it (it was available as a free e-book) and was even less favorably impressed. Impossibly sweet, good child, who (naturally) dies. Or not really, he’s “gone to the back of the North Wind”.
I’m too old for this to have been available when I was a kid, but I’ve bought other Robert Munsch books for my offspring and love his stuff. Very funny, subversive stuff. I read the book in question though and loathed it at first sight. Even w/o the creepiness factor, it’s just too effing smarmy.
Papa Zappa hated it too. We fantasized about Mommy peering in her adult son’s room from outside the window, and learning more about his life than she had any business knowing. “Uh, Mom, let me introduce you to my special friend George”…
THANK OG! I think that is the most horrible book ever written. I have people :rolleyes: at me because apparently I “just don’t get it”.
It is a nasty piece of literature and I agree wholeheartedly with Shirley Ujest.
As I was falling asleep last noc, Charlotte’s Web popped into my head. What a selfish lout of a pig he is. Did he EVER say thank you to Charlotte? Did he ever do anything to justify her sacrifices for him?
I loved that book as a child, but tried to read it to my kids and said, nope-not happening.
I also nominate Little Women --I read it to my older kids. I kept putting the book down and telling them “girls CAN do more than this; girls don’t have to only get married and have babies” etc.
I got so enraged by the Victorian schmaltz and sexism that we barely finished it.
Blech.
Re Fairy Tales. IMS, the original Cinderella involves the stepsister’s cutting off their toes to try to fit the slipper. Nice, eh?
I don’t mind the scary tales–and I don’t think most kids mind, either (kids can be fairly bloodthirsty)–it’s the pointlessness of some of the tales (see the German cow tale above) that bothers me. If ya gotta have violence etc–have it have a point, eh?
Meant to add that I also only experienced the Bible Stories in my dentist office. Since I was un-churched as a child, I couldn’t figure out why the people wore these funky clothes. And they seemed so sad all the time. It seemed like nothing good happened to these people–I remember alot of sheep on men’s shoulders ( how dirty! how heavy) and women lugging water around. It was all very strange–because although they wore shawls etc, they had hair and makeup like Donna Reed. Very surreal.
I also thought the book just came with the dentist office. Standard issue. I never put the book together with God or Jesus–it connected in my mind with teeth cleaning and “no cavities!”.
One thing you should know about Hans Christian Anderson is that, in real life, he was very much a “melancholy Dane”. He suffered from periods of deep depression throughout his life and that certainly is reflected in the somber tone of much of his stories.
Also, although I know this is ethnic stereotyping, Scandinavians are not known to be a “happy, chirpy” and zany lot. Maybe moroseness is just something in our genes. (I’m of half-Norwegian descent by the way.)
I wouldn’t necessarily say the tale about the farmer trading his wife to the devil for a cow that dies shortly thereafter is pointless. Basically, if you deal with the devil, you’re going to get burned. Caveat emptor.
As for the violence and scariness, you have to consider that these tales had their roots in the Middle Ages which was a violent and scary time in Europe. That period of history seems far removed from us now so we’re more easily shocked by the brutality depicted in these stories.
The memories are coming back now. Elizabeth Eliza. The piano that could only be played while sitting outside the window. Some lady from out of town who knew everything (i.e. had an IQ higher than a bag o’ rocks). I’m going to go bleach my brain now.
