Books You Loved as a Child But Don't Want for Your Kids

[Anonymous]

What I mean is books that include things you wouldn't want to teach your kids are ok. For me, an example is the book Ping. Every night the duck owner uses a switch to hit the last duck to get on the boat. Corporal punishment! And someone is always last so someone always fails! Later in the book, a fisherman has fitted rings around the necks of birds so the birds can't swallow the fish they catch (cruel!) and instead bring the fish to the fisherman. Any other examples out there?

[Anonymous]

Tikki tikki Tembo. Totally racist

[Anonymous]

A lot of stuff from Rudyard Kipling is racist and imperialist.

[Anonymous]

Five Chinese Brothers

[Anonymous]

Bedtime For Frances. Basically says, go to bed or I’ll hit you. Yikes!

[Anonymous]

Well, I wouldn't say I LOVED it, but I truly hate the message in The Giving Tree.

[Anonymous]

Nothing. Books are about creativity and imagination - there's nothing wrong with learning about the evolution of child development by teaching a 3 yr old that in the olden days it was common to spank children but now we know how it can affect them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, I wouldn't say I LOVED it, but I truly hate the message in The Giving Tree.

I used to debate this with a girl I was friends with in college. I feel like reactions to The Giving Tree are so interesting. I love it so much, I feel like it describes life. I dunno, there is such truth in it. I understand the arguments against like, the boy is greedy and ungrateful etc but I never read it that way. I feel like it must say something about us, not positive or negative just different, about our upbringings and parents. It is a book that is surprisingly polarizing.

[Anonymous]

Another vote for the Ping duck book, but because I’m Asian-American and DS is half. I grew up with tons of racist or racially insensitive books.

[Anonymous]

The little match girl - I LOVED it. An orphan survives by selling matches on the street corner. On Christmas Eve she’s very cold in a blizzard and sees a family in their home all warm and happy. They welcome her in and she gets to enjoy this beautiful family scene. Except she didn’t really, that was a hallucination from hypothermia and she’s dead found dead on the street corner in the snow on Xmas morning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of stuff from Rudyard Kipling is racist and imperialist.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The little match girl - I LOVED it. An orphan survives by selling matches on the street corner. On Christmas Eve she’s very cold in a blizzard and sees a family in their home all warm and happy. They welcome her in and she gets to enjoy this beautiful family scene. Except she didn’t really, that was a hallucination from hypothermia and she’s dead found dead on the street corner in the snow on Xmas morning.

I remember this book! Geez looking at this list and thinking about books I read as a kid, it was bleak stuff!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, I wouldn't say I LOVED it, but I truly hate the message in The Giving Tree.

I used to debate this with a girl I was friends with in college. I feel like reactions to The Giving Tree are so interesting. I love it so much, I feel like it describes life. I dunno, there is such truth in it. I understand the arguments against like, the boy is greedy and ungrateful etc but I never read it that way. I feel like it must say something about us, not positive or negative just different, about our upbringings and parents. It is a book that is surprisingly polarizing.

It is a polarizing book. Definitely one of my least favorite books! I would never read it to my child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The little match girl - I LOVED it. An orphan survives by selling matches on the street corner. On Christmas Eve she’s very cold in a blizzard and sees a family in their home all warm and happy. They welcome her in and she gets to enjoy this beautiful family scene. Except she didn’t really, that was a hallucination from hypothermia and she’s dead found dead on the street corner in the snow on Xmas morning.

OMG I remember this book. My mom brought it home for me to read and I felt so emotionally manipulated by it. Much worse than Bambi's mom dying.

[Anonymous]

Remember Johnny Tremain?