The Huffington Post has compiled a slideshow of the creepiest children’s books ever, and while many of their picks are only off-putting because of their silly bathroom humor, there are a few that we believe could cause deep psychic trauma in a child. Having a pair of gay uncles? Not creepy — in fact, it sounds rather ideal. Having a pair of gay uncles with no respect for personal space who are leering at your gender indeterminate head from behind a curtain? Suddenly we’ve got the heebie-jeebies.
– This was written and illustrated by children who survived the Hiroshima attack. Don’t you think that nuclear war is a little heavy for a 5-year-old?
– Reading this would have convinced us that our parents — who have always enjoyed a glass of “medicinal” wine with dinner — were alcoholics, too.
– OK, let’s assume for a second that an elementary school kid has the level of sensitivity needed to read this book and not just point at the cover. And then they decide to do some research only to discover that conjoined twins have a 25% survival rate. Nice.
– We’ve already said our bit about this one. These uncles make us sad. Also, as a commenter on HuffPo pointed out, how much funnier would it have been if this book was about a mom who sleeps around and the word uncle was in quotation marks?
A Scary Thing Happened – As kids, we found the Challenger disaster incredibly upsetting, even though it had little to do with our everyday lives. We can only imagine if we’d been forced to color in a rendering of the explosion.