I hated - HATED - * The Runaway Bunny *. I was totally freaked out by the stalker mother. Fine, the little bunny shouldn’t run away from his mother, but if I had a psychopathic bitch of a mother like that who would follow me and turn into all of those creepy things, I’d run away, too!
And my grandmother read me the story of Bluebeard when I was five! I had nightmares for more than a year straight…
I do like The Giving Tree, though. And, yes, I did get the message when I was young. It made me sad, but it’s supposed to make you sad. I bought the book for my younger brother last year and read it to him. I ended up bawling and looked over at my father who was listening to me reading, and he had tears in his eyes, too. I love both of my parents so much, and this book always just reenforced the fact that I shouldn’t be a horrible person to them, because they’re wonderful people.
But I did hate Curious George. Oh, and Clifford, the Big Red Dog. I don’t know why, but I just hated that damn dog and that annoying girl, Emily Elizabeth, I think?
Eek! Some sacred cows are being given a right old beating here!
Oh come on, Little Women is of its time, and should be read in that context. Jo March endures as a good role model for girls, AFAIAC.
Pippi Longstocking works as a fantasy role model, although I take the poster’s point.
The sequel was called The Long Secret, and was excellent.
Harriet works as a character precisely because she is a real, flawed obnoxious child. She’s not meant to be likeable, and is therefore pretty believable. A refreshing antidote to all the cutesy protagonists in books and films.
I agree about the ‘real’ Mary Poppins.
As for myself, some of the excesses of Enid Blyton already mentioned by one or two posters did irritate me at the time of reading, but it didn’t stop me from reading her books, much to my retrospective embarrassment.
I’m with you on this one, though this is adult revisionism, since I never experienced these books as a kid. There’s something horrid about the black holes for eyes that characters in the Clifford books have.
There should be a subthread here, about books you hate to read to your children. Clifford is on that list, as is CG, as are the Spot books, as are… well, we do have a nice time reading the phone book.
I’d heard a little about, but never read, “The Giving Tree” until I was already grown up. When I finally read it, I was appalled - I suppose you could argue that it was all about selfless love, but it seemed to me that it was really all about selfishly and abusively using someone else who’s too gutless to say “Enough!” The little boy/old man didn’t seem to learn anything or be a better person at the end, either. May I also add, Shel Silverstein’s photo on the back cover is a little scary.
My vote, though, goes to “Pat the Bunny.” Just annoying, cloying and tedious, IMHO.
Neat thread. I’ve never read The Giving Tree, but from the descriptions it sounds horrific. I’ll probably have to check it out of the library just so I can be properly outraged.
When I was young, Eeyore totally freaked me out because he was so morose. My pet theory is that it has something to do with my own depressive tendencies.
Actually, I recently had a revelation about *Winnie the Pooh * - all the characters represent the various latent neuroses of Christopher Robin. Eeyore is depressed, Tigger is manic, Pooh is a compulsive eater, Rabbit is obsessive compulsive, and I don’t think I need to detail the issues involved with Roo always hanging out in Kanga’s pouch.
These days I’m disturbed by Goodnight Moon. Who is the quiet old lady? If she’s a grandma or nanny or whatever, why use such a generic term - sounds like some stranger walked into the house and started shhshing people. And “Goodnight nobody, goodnight mush.” What is up with that?
I kind of liked Guess How Much I Love You, until my husband (whose father was insecure and always tried to outdo his son) said, “Yay, a children’s book about a dad who always has to win!”
Reread it. Seriously. How Marmee relates how she has to leave the room rather than say something “unfortunate” and how Jo loses the chance to go to Europe because she hasn’t learned Marmee’s lesson. How Amy sucks up to anybody and anything and is not punished for burning Jo’s scribbles etc.
Sorry, but a true classic will hold up no matter the “context”–I don’t see Elizabeth Bennett becoming out of date, for example. Or Jane Eyre, come to that. Classics speak to the human condition–not the mores and fashions of a particular time.
I agree with you re Harriet. She is one troubled kid, but like the girl in The Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler --she is genuine.
–see, I liked MP because she really doesn’t like kids all that much. The later books with her got odd, to say the least, but she was a good complex character for kids.
Hey, I used to read the Bobbset Twins, so there ya go! <shudders>
I guess I was just a weird kid, none of it bothered me too much. I just read the real syrupy, whacked-out books like the Uncle Wiggily stories or The Five Little Peppers, and thought, “People sure were…peculiar…in those days.” Kind of the same way I feel when I listen to some of the more bizarre 70s tunes.
Still, the more gruesome retributions meted out to wicked stepsisters and the like usually do get left out of the children’s versions. For instance, IIRC in the original Cinderella the stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by little birds sitting on Cinderella’s shoulders, as she walks to and from the church in her wedding.
And I think to try fit the glass slipper, didn’t at least one stepsister hack off part of her (too-big) foot, but the blood leaked out and gave the deception away?
Have you read some of the more typical Victorian novels for girls? Try Charlotte Yonge’s Heir of Redclyffe, that was pretty great stuff for the time. Little Women was written as an antidote to them. I know it comes off now as horribly confining to girls, but that’s because we’re so unaware of what things were like back then. Jo is a real tomboy, the antithesis of a good Victorian girl–to them she looked horrifyingly wild. Little Women was pretty revolutionary for its day, and the sole comfort of many an active, ambitious girl.
Of course, Victorian books for boys are also a lot of fun! There was one famous and popular author, whose name escapes me for the moment. His books consisted entirely of series of young men heading off to various dangerous climes and then slaughtering every animal in sight in creative and bloodthirsty ways.
R. M. Ballantyne: his The Gorilla Hunters is the story of a group of plucky Victorian schoolboys who go to Africa to kill gorillas and any other fauna unlucky enough to cross their path. They also malign a lot of “niggers” {their term, not mine}. Here’s a taste. Chapter Two, which you can access from the link, contains enough nigger-maligning to make your hair stand on end.
Note to mods: the link is to a whole chapter, but it’s public domain.
eleanorigby, keep in mind that Alcott was writing largely about her own family, and got really annoyed when her readers would write to her BEGGING to have Jo end up with Laurie.
Besides, the the most recent movie version (with Christian Bale as Laurie-drool!), is wonderful, and I loved Susan Sarandon as Marmee.
He was a guest of Charles Dickens and family once. Afterwards, Dickens hung up a plaque in the guest room: “Hans Andersen slept here for three weeks — which seemed to this family forever.” If Charles Dickens thinks you’re a drag, then you must be clinically depressed.
The movies are fine–I am just asking that it be reread–you’ll be diabetic by chapter 5.
Jo ending up with the Professor was one of the few good bits in the book. That and Beth dying, of course.
It matters that Alcott’s books were revolutionary for their time only in Lit class. We are talking about children’s books that irritate even children. Little Women is dated and it shows. If some here want to be sentimental about it, so be it. For more glurge and sugar, read Little Men as well–to OD, read the whole series. Ugh.
If you really want to gag, take a look at Eight Cousins (I think that’s the title) and Rose in Bloom, its sequel.
Granted, I read these both when I was older, and Eight Cousins isn’t so bad as Rose in Bloom, but good God, those were awful. I nearly threw up by the end.
My mother is German, and one year for Christmas we got her an English translation of German fairy tales, including Cinderalla and Snow White and all the other good ol’ fashioned violent ones. After we all got a good laugh out of it, she brought out Struwwelpeter, a German book of “children’s tales,” and read it to us. The highlights include:[ul]
[li]A story about a kid who sucked his thumb too much, and so his mother hired a man with a gigantic pair of scissors to come and cut his thumbs off.[/li][li]A little girl who burned to death while playing with matches (and kittens crying over the smoking piles of ashes afterwards).[/li][li]A picky boy who starves to death at the dinner table because he won’t eat his veggies.[/li][li]A kid who laughed at a black child, and so was dunked into a huge inkwell and everybody laughed at him because he was even blacker.[/ul] And that’s just what I can remember. “I was raised with this stuff,” she said, and my brother and I traded glances, amazed to have survived this long without having suffered massive injury.[/li]
Another story I had issue with as a child was The Velveteen Rabbit. A kid comes down with scarlet fever, and his little stuffed rabbit is his only friend because he can’t go outside. When the kid gets better, everything he came in contact with has to be burned. The little stuffed rabbit makes a wish (or something), gets turned into a real rabbit, and escapes immolation. I remember asking the teacher in school if the rabbit still had scarlet fever.
