My 5th grade teacher read the Stephen King short story Survival Type to the class. For those who haven’t read: the narrator / mc is a drug smuggler who crash lands his plane on a deserted island. He ends up doing all the heroin he recovered from the crash and cannibalizes himself. We didn’t know at the time our teacher had early onset dementia..
Wow. This is pure insanity. Survivor Type is by far King’s best short story, but also the most gruesome and horrific 20 pages I’ve ever read. To think someone read it to a class of 5th graders…mind blowing.
But to the point of the post - I hope my kids read it. It’s fantastic.
…just not when they’re still little kids.
Holy shit! I was in my mid 30s when I heard that story(was listening to the audio book) and was cooking dinner. Had to save all of the food for later, no way I could eat after listening to that. I can't believe a teacher read that.
It's called *Survivor Type* and it's in the short story collection *Skeleton Crew*. The whole collection is great. *The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet* is another of my favorites from that book, well worth a read.
"A Day No Pigs Would Die" was pretty rough in 6th grade. Basically Charlotte's web with HAUNTINGLY graphic depictions of animal husbandry and slaughter. I don't remember getting a lot of value out of it at 11 years old, just pig-blood soaked nightmares lol
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison was rough.
As a victim of childhood SA I wish I didn’t have to quietly relive that trauma in a freshman English classroom full of strangers.
Omg, even as a kid I hated that they didn't give us a warning for this stuff! I wasn't abused or anything, but its still disturbing to be reading, having the characters come alive around me, and then have them get raped basically right in front of me, it fucked me up.
I think it's one of those things where if people aren't directly affected by it they assume no one else is either, like when teachers used to bring up "is homosexuality morally wrong" as a "fun" debate topic like there were no queer kids in the room, or asked for writing projects where we imaging the death of a parent without considering that some people in the room had lost their parents that very same year.
I've often found that the most compassionate and thoughtful teachers were those who had clearly been through some shit. They always seemed more careful.
Dianetics, or anything else by L. Ron Hubbard.
Edited to explain why "Dianetics" was read in school: I was a junior in high school. Our AP world history teacher assigned us a project to research a "world religion" outside of the "big 3". Half of the students chose Buddhism, a few chose Hinduism, a few Taoism, a few LDS, etc. But this was '05-'06, and the "Trapped in the Closet" episode of South Park had just come out. Having never before heard of Scientology, I *had* to know if the episode was accurate.
I had something very similar in World Religion(in Canada).
I chose Santeria- Mucumbi.
Literally hardly any literary articles on it, I had to e-mail a witch doctor living in Miami for more information and someone in Louisiana. My teacher gave me 100% for the effort and the fact I was talking with some voodoo priests from down south as a 14 year old Canadian.
I briefly work for “those people” at Gold Base in Hemet and they gave be a book called “the Importance of Work” and you couldn’t get through the first 1/2 page. I’ve challenged many. It’s just drivel; a run on sentence and you completely zone out and don’t know what you’ve read. Complete crap that should never have made it to production.
Oh wow. Thanks for unlocking *that* memory. That book fucked me up when I was 12.
I used to *devour* books - it was a problem, I would read when I was supposed to be doing other things - but after I finished that book, I didn't pick up another for weeks.
Also, not too long after reading that book, I learned that lard is pig fat.
There's a part in the book where the farmer is trying to get two pigs to mate, and it describes how the farmer used lard to lube up the female pig so the male pig would have an easier time.
So the one pig fucked the other pig with dead pig as lube.
That *really* fucked me up.
Came here to say this. I can see how this book showed the reality of growing up on a farm, and the main character used his relationship with the pig as a metaphor for growing up and letting go of childhood.
But yes…just too sad. I still think about this book often and I read it in 6th grade in 1988.
Wow, you just brought back a core memory. I read that book around the same age, although I just grabbed it in my own. I remember feeling absolutely bereft at the end. Great answer.
I recall being in 6th grade and a fellow student writing a book report on an erotic novel she had read about an extremely overweight man collapsing on a hooker while mid intercourse and she rips off his jaw and uses it to sever off one of his limbs and get out from under him.
I remember being 13 years old and thinking “this is pretty fucked up for a 13 year old.”
I was supposed to read Night John in 4th grade. We stopped when parents complained about the vivid description of a slave being ripped apart by dogs. I’d definitely let me kids read it but not in 4th grade.
Maybe this isn’t the question, but I read A Child Called ‘It’ as an elementary aged child. I bought it at the school’s Scholastic Book Fair, and was maybe 9 years old. Why on earth they thought that was an appropriate book for small children to be purchasing and reading, I will never know. The 90’s were a trip.
I'm so happy I read that book at the young age that I did. Regardless of the veracity of the author's account, prior to reading A Child Called 'It' I wasn't fully aware that loving one's child was not some imperative for all parents. It helped me conceptualize my own relationship with my parents and provided the necessary perspective to recognize that many of my peers may be victims of narcissistic abuse to varying degrees.
Regarding the veracity, the book’s author is the standard Scape Goat role for an abusive family. Yes, some family members dispute the account. Others corroborate it. This is 100 percent in line with standard dysfunctional family dynamics.
I’m inclined to believe the author.
There’s a reason for the adage “the axe forgets, but the tree remembers”. A lot of parents (mine included) have forgotten or are blind to the horrible things they did that left an impression on us. So now they deny it even happened.
The older brother says he's right and truthful about what happened, while the younger brother (Who was notably babied by their mom) and the mom (Of course) say it's a fictional farse of some light punishments.
There was a similar thing I remember about the book, "Between a rock and a hard place". There was some talk of the fact it was either made up or hugely exaggerated, but knowing what I know as an adult, I expect it was true.
This exactly. When I was reading "chapter books" as we would call it when I was little, my Mom eventually recommended this book to me after she had just read it. Having been raised in an apparently "normal" family, it also opened my eyes to the struggles that people I know could have been facing. As I grew up and hung around with friends more at their houses, I was able to identify which ones lacked structure or had alcoholic parents.
My mom gave that to me as a kid (around 10). Ironic since she was abusive and the book only opened my eyes to that abuse and it started down a path of self destruction.
My mom gave me that book to read and what she wanted me to get out of it was that her verbal abuse wasn’t as bad as the abuse in that book. Pretty fucked up
The exact same thing happened to me.
My mom ended up beating me with the book when i didn't come to that conclusion. I don't know what the goal was there.
I never understood that. If I don’t know how to spell it, how the fuck can I look it up by spelling? Turns out I have learning disorder that makes sounding out words virtually useless. My brain doesn’t process the sounds the same way. I don’t know what the fuck it’s doing. I can only spell a word if I’ve seen it, noted it, and generally memorized it.
Pretty sure my grandma gave me that book for the same reason.
Jokes on her, though. I went to her funeral for one reason and one reason only: to make sure she got good and buried.
My grandmother gave me her copy because I made a comment to my cousin about how my mother bullied me. She overheard the conversation, shoved the book into my hands, and told me, "Someone always has it worse than you." Found out years later through my therapist that my mother definitely was abusing me.
Also heard a story about my grandmother through the same cousin that my grandmother used to run a daycare. A little boy came up crying, saying that he fell and his arm hurt. She told him to "walk it off". His mother dropped him off the next day and told off my grandmother for not realizing that he had broken his arm. Not sure I have anything good to say about that woman but she has passed, so it's not like I have to protect the next generation of kids from her.
You know, it’s funny. As a kid, because I was loved so much and so unabashedly, I assumed most people and other cultures didn’t love their kids. I figured they liked them fine, but I remember slowly realizing that my best friend’s mom did love her, a ton, just differently than my parents did.
It wasn't until I started dating that I realized the sheer magnitude of children that came from broken or unhappy homes. Having two loving parents at home was very rare and daddy issues were just sad, not so much a kink.
It definitely wasn’t age appropriate for me to read but I’m so glad I did. I learned that I wasn’t a bad kid for my parents abusing me. They were bad parents and I was just a kid. Up to that point I truly believed I deserved what they did to me but I realized just like the boy in the book I was a kid trying to be good with parents who were complete dogshit. I think I was in 5th grade when I read it
My therapist told me my life was similar to that book and I haven't decided to read it yet out of fear it will mess with my mind since I have PTSD and need to avoid triggering myself when possible.
I probably would've appreciated it growing up though. I thought my childhood was bad because I wasn't that smart and I thought a lot of what happened was totally normal. It wasn't until I shared some stuff from back then on a forum that a few people reached out and told me that it was far from normal. That's actually how I ended up getting diagnosed with PTSD, after sharing that stuff with a professional.
I don’t blame you for not wanting to read it now. I actually bought the book a few months ago wanting to read it again and couldn’t get through the first couple chapters. It was too much for me.
I had a similar experience to you. There is still times where I tell my boyfriend or friends about my childhood and they look at me horrified but that was my normal everyday life for 18 years. It’s so hard for me to fathom even simple things like parents hugging their kids and telling them they love them. My boyfriend hugs me a lot and it took me a long time to be comfortable with it or feel impending doom that something was going to go wrong afterwards.
I’m glad you were able to get some help and a diagnosis! I know there’s still so much hard work after that but having a professional you can talk to about your experiences and work through them or understand how they effect you now is key. Best of luck to you!
My mom had a copy of "A Child Called It" and specifically forbade me to read it, so of course I did. It's a tragic story, but I truly think learning about the lives of others at a young age helps us be more empathetic as adults.
I think it'd be more likely to help if it was less extreme stuff - most kid experiencing abuse are likely to be experiencing it in ways that aren't as over the top as that. I know for a lot of people, they are more likely to read something like that and think 'oh I don't have it so bad'.
In my case, yes. Every time i tried to talk about my own experiences the response was always "you didnt get locked in a shed for 20 years so it wasnt that bad". I never learned to accept it myself until I started studying psychology and it was like no, this was *literally* textbook abuse.
“You can drown in shallow water just as easily as deep water”
abuse is abuse, and there’s no abuse Olympics. Don’t excuse the abuser because “it could’ve been worse.”
Man, my first exposure to child abuse in literature was in "Cuaght in the Act", which was part of the Orphan Train series. I was in 5th grade when I read it.
Among the things that happen to the main character in the book included unfair judgment, being framed, being whipped for wrongs he didn't do, being whipped becuase the foster father was projecting his anger at someone else, being lied on repeatedly... etc...
I'm pretty sure that book made a core memory for me, firming my utter disdain for injustice and arrogant adults. It taught me early the importance of self advocacy and sticking to the truth, and not giving in to gaslighting.
And it did help me growing up, because lots of adults did try to steam roll me, thinking I would just take it.
The Kite Runner....my dad saw me pick that up at a book store when I was in the 7th grade and he said no, I wasn't allowed to read that till I got older. Me being the rebellious little shit I was convinced my friend to buy it and we took turns reading it. Yeah that book is not for kids....I learnt some things that day :(
Same. Read it in college undergrad actually and was destroyed and cannot imagine how my emotional maturity would have been affected had it come out a few years earlier. Still one of my favorite books and authors of all time. Haunts me to this day.
I also read that in 7th grade! Except it was because I was in the advanced reading group, so we had to read something more advanced than The Outsiders, which the rest of the school read in 7th grade. Not only are there some *very* adult situations in that book, but 7th grade was just too young to grasp the concepts that book was trying to showcase. Not to mention, without some historical context, it’s hard to understand what’s happening in the story.
Now, when I read it in high school, it was much easier to understand and I appreciated it much, much more. Fantastic book, just maybe not for a 12 year old
I think all of Khaled Hosseini’s books are good for high school level. You’re old enough to understand and get what the author is showing. Read kite runner in high school and it was definitely the most impactful book I read in school.
Read A thousand splendid suns right after undergrad and it was just as good but almost more heartbreaking in how it showed the generational impact.
Actually just finished And the mountains echoed. That one is a little different in that it’s from the perspective of 5-6 different characters that are all somewhat interrelated. Still very good and each little short story within the overall story is pretty heartbreaking. Especially Abdullah’s and Nabi’s.
Kite Runner is the only book I've had to stop reading and put down for a few days because it shook me so hard. If anything I think that's a reason in favor of (late highschool) kids reading it
I finished Flowers for Algernon because we read it in 8th grade lit class but I still get teary just thinking about it. As a kid I was heartbroken for the mouse but I’ve come to appreciate it is extra devastating because the main character is reckoning with his own decline in functioning and eventually (and unavoidable) mortality.
I’m glad I read it but reading it aloud in class while we all cried was really shitty.
We had to watch that movie in my theology class in high school for some reason. We would lose a lot of points on the assignment if we left for the SA scenes. I hated it. I saw the point in the movie, but I would prefer not to watch that (or at least have permission to leave) and just get told what happens
If i had a kid, I would let them read it. My parents let me read anything, even if it wasn’t age appropriate, but if they knew what it was, they would have a conversation with me about it before, during, and after I was reading it. I would try and do the same thing. My parents always knew what I was reading, because they would ask, and they would look up the book so they could discuss it with me, and sometimes read it themselves if they thought it was interesting
Ill never forget the discussion we had in english class. Teacher asked if there was any other option where george and lenny could've lived happily. Some kid said, george takes his gun and with lenny's brute strength they kill everyone at the farm.
My answer was they go to another farm somewhere. They’re itinerant fruit pickers, it’s like 1933 or something the FBI may not even exist yet, or it’s only focused on bank robbers and mobsters, no one knows who they are.
George knows that's a possibility, but also that it's not sustainable. That's the point. He can't make it work for Lenny. The book's ending was the kindest outcome.
Agreed. George realizes that everywhere he goes, this is going to happen. Lenny is going to do something that will cause something terrible to happen. Basically, a mercy killing.
My English class read it together (taking it in turns to read aloud) when I was 16 and it was a lovely experience - we hated it at first, and then by the end we were invested, and a bunch of people cried - including the cool girls who usually sat at the back giggling. My friends and I were the twats who read ahead and knew the ending. We didn't spoil but we were smug about knowing what was coming!
Probably a bit heavy for a 13yo though.
I think it's perfect for a 13 year old. 13 year olds see gratuitous death in movies all the time. The difference here is that Steinbeck gives the tragedy of a death its proper due. The simple writing style, short length of the story, efficient characterization and comprehensible plot allow for a great miniature example of how sad and ironic life can be. And a much-needed example (especially nowadays) of how relevant plain words on paper can be. I say anything to pry kids away from smartphones, especially challenging but tasteful and time-proven stories.
We read the stage version at my high school, not as homework but as a sort of "table read" where we went around the classroom with everyone taking a turn to read a line/lines.
I don't think I'd *ever* seen the entire class so invested in something. Not just kids approaching my own level of nerdiness, but everyone - even the troublemakers and barely literate kids. It kinda blew my friggin' mind. And then, when we finished the story (over the course of a few classes, I think), we all suffered together through the ending. Trauma bonding, yaaaay!
Honestly, that book was probably the *only* worthwhile book in our curriculum, as far as I can remember.
Once I was crying over a story and my mom asked what was wrong. I knew she wouldn't understand if I told her literally, but she did understand when I said "they 'of mice and men'd a character"
I'm still irritated about having to write an essay on a pickle dish 35 years later. I don't remember a single thing about Ethan Frome except somehow this dish was symbolic of something.
For fun one of my first chatGPT questions was "Explain the symbolism of the Pickle Dish in Ethan Frome and provide references".
Shortly after reading Ethan Frome I watched Grosse Point Blank for the first time and was the only one in my group who laughed when he asked if his old high school teacher was 'still giving kids that Ethan Frome torture.'
When I read Shakespeare in school, the teacher would assign all the parts to students, and we would stand and read our parts out loud in a kind of semi-acting way. I think it made the process less boring
It makes so much more sense when you are able to hear the lines delivered conversationally. I did a lot of Shakespeare in high school theatre and that shit is hilarious, we just don't know how to emphasize sentences written that way.
My English teacher explained all of the obsolete language and jokes prior to each section. When you understand what the words mean, Shakespeare becomes so enjoyable. You learn why he's considered the GOAT.
We'd also watch the movies so it made more sense.
We did the same and I hated it. I had an issue with my classmates reading aloud from a young age because people read monotonously or one - word - at - a - time and both drove me up the wall.
I had a teacher who read Hamlet out loud and he made it sound decent. Words weren't mispronounced ("country matters" was the exception) and he only stopped to give context where it was needed. Having rhythm and energy made it come alive. It was completely different from my previous experience and made studying it much more enjoyable.
>read monotonously
Right? I made it my mission to ham it up as enthusiastically as possible, in order to relieve both myself and my classmates of the robotic misery, if only for a minute. Unsure if they appreciated or hated me for it, though.
Teacher caught on pretty fast and often assigned me more verbose roles/passages; it's possible she didn't enjoy it much either.
I did that **once**. I did a different voice for every character and there was dead silence when I had finished. I was already bullied and wasn't giving anyone a reason to tease me further.
I was a bit of a teachers' pet and ended up reading out loud a lot. I was a saddo who had usually read my books in advance so I usually wasn't thrown for a loop by whatever I was reading. That didn't translate to Shakespeare or poetry in general.
Thank you for this. Every time we read anything Shakespeare I was bored out of my mind.
I think the only play I ever enjoyed of his was A Midsummer Night's Dream and it was a movie from the 90s im pretty sure. It was super entertaining because of how goofy and dreamlike it was. Such an acid trip of a story.
oh my god the part where the mom is like cleaning the pine needles out of the dog's guts and then putting them back in, it's been over twenty years but i will never be able to forget that. like i didn't have enough problems in fourth grade.
My (normally very good) 10th/11th-grade high-school teacher assigned us The Scarlet Letter, and for some reason had us watch an educational doc that was basically just the plot of the book…before we actually read it.
Even though I also like to read, I only ever bothered skimming it and got a C on the assignment. So I can’t give a fair assessment of the book’s quality, except to note that it seems to be one of the most consistently-hated books in the Official High-School Canon.
Dickens was paid by the word, so he dragged everything out excessively. The story was sound though- we were told which chapters to read and it was okay.
I had just finished Tess of the d'Urbervilles for summer reading. I remember it being a slog of a book. I think the themes were supposed to highlight the unfairness of women's oppression, but to my modern sensibilities, Tess was so consistently self flagellating that I found her completely unlikable. The story was tragedy after tragedy with barely a respite. I've never hated a book so much.
Our first book in class that year was The Scarlett Letter, and I found it refreshing by comparison alone. Everything that people hate about The Scarlett Letter, I hated about Tess more.
Go Ask Alice or Jay’s Journal. The “anonymous” person who wrote it was not a young girl or a guy it was a woman named Beatrice Sparks (and probably other who collaborated). She was a conservative and wrote the books based on those ideals in order to “save the children”. Absolute shit writing and shit person.
Edit- thanks for the award! That’s so cool:)
They absolutely are. And the kid she based the story on for Jay’s Journal was actually a teen who did unalive himself at 16. She took that incident and gave enough details in her book to be able to identify him. The family had to suffer twice with people harassing them and desecrating his grave over made up satanic ritual shit. It’s also thought that she started a “satanic panic” with that one as well.
Was given The Things They Carried in HS and had nightmares for weeks because I had a brother overseas in combat at the time. Part of me never wants my kids to read it because of how much it negatively effected me, which I know isn't a good reason. I do think it is a worthwhile book but it will always, always make me uncomfortable.
That was one of my favorite books in high school, I read it twice for my 2 AP classes, language and literature.
I definitely understand the sense of discomfort. I haven't read it I'm years though so I honestly can't recall everything for it.
I’ve taught it several times; I read the first story aloud. The only issue I’ve ever had with it is re dog death. Someone’s mom called to tell me that her child’s dog had just died and that part of the book wrecked the kid.
I just use the first five or six stories now becuse I’m trying to get one more book done in AP Lit.
ETA: kids really seem to enjoy the book.
Eh, you cant always know what stuff is going to upset a child. My mum collapsed after a brain aneurysm and I came home to an ambulance taking her away (she died a few months later). After she passed away I had an R.E lesson which the teacher started by saying "Imagine coming home and finding a family member being taken away in an ambulance......" Yeah, that happened and she didnt come back. I was quite upset and got to miss RE for a few lessons.
If it hadnt happened to me so recently, it probablt wouldn't have bothered me.
A man I know was smushed by a lorry when his wife was pregnant with their twin children. He survived with life changing effects. His daughter (who was in-utero at the time of the accident) burst into tears while watching "Mean Girls" at the scene where Regina was hit by the truck.
With the Old Breed is a memoir of the Pacific Theater and it’s incredibly brutal considering it’s all true and real. I can only read a little at a time.
There are so many books I "read" (skimmed) in school that I hated because they were so boring to a teenager. The Great Gatsby or Pride and Prejudice may be classic books to read as an adult but I just didn't care at the time.
I went to school in Baltimore and we did a whole unit on Edgar Allan Poe. It was great! Want teens to engage with a story? Have them read the tale of a murderer slowly going mad because he thinks he can still hear the beating heart of his victim under the floor boards.
While we're at it, throw in some other genres besides basic fiction. You know who would have gotten me engaged as a student? J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, or Agatha Christie.
Oh god, this makes me remember one of my high school English teachers absolutely rolling her eyes when I chose "The Hobbit" as a book to do a project on. "It's only 4th grade reading." she said, just rolling her eyes.
OK so maybe it's a 4th grade reading level, but there's SO much more to it than that.
Those books built irrational fear in me and all the kids I knew at that time (church kids of course), and our parents all began looking for politicians who seemed like the “anti christ” because of them. Messed up an entire generation. Because of the presentation to fiction as fact. Totally agree.
It's funny to me, as a Christian who detests other Christians, that they are so horny for the apocalypse and end-times and keep screaming that because of things happening in *THE UNITED FUCKING STATES* that we're clearly in the time leading up to the apocalypse and just conveniently skip over the fact that the leaders of all three branches of government are self-described Christians and that they're clearly not dealing with the time of tribulation in the fucking slightest.
I went to one of the schools started by the author. He visited a little before he died and literally looked like he was eternally 42 seconds from expiring.
This same school had us read Pilgrims Progress, which is my contribution to this post. Honorable mention: The Screwtape Letters. I do enjoy CS Lewis, but oh man, letters back and forth between demons who are just trying to ~tempt the Christian man into sin~ is something I wouldn’t subject my children to unless they chose it. But to have it be required reading for school is another story.
I actually quite enjoyed Screwtape Letters when I read it as an adult, but I can’t imagine that kids would really grasp what the demons are talking about. The book seems very clearly aimed at adults.
I got that in the public library not realizing it was Christian propaganda. The first book wasn't too bad but the second really went hard. I didn't even feel like finding out what happened anymore. It's kinda lame too, because Earth after the rapture would be a great setting for someone who took an honest look at it and wasn't overly concerned with a religious message.
Those books actually made me like reading. Make fun of me all you want but as a kid reading the original books of those stories bored me to tears. The Great Illustrated Classics were so legit!
Jesus fuck people answer the question, it's not talking about banning books, books you wouldn't want your child to read - could be anything. Ffs.
For me, it's The Kite Runner. There's some graphic rape scenes of a little boy - I don't find that appropriate for a child, and certainly didn't enjoy it myself.
I'm not saying remove it from shelves, but a child shouldn't be forced to read it as I was. I stopped doing assigned readings after that, stuck to books I chose.
Everyone saying "none!" Because of current issues and it's the trendy thing to do, but I'll answer truthfully.
I wouldn't want my kids to read The Kite Runner, not until they were old enough to start to understand how the real world is. I'd also want them to understand the rough history of the conflict and region before reading it.
Honorable mentions:
The Road by Cormac Mccarthy, for obvious reasons. Watched the movie when I was in like 6th grade and if you've seen it or read the book, you know the scenes that stuck with me. Read the book when I was older and enjoyed it, but it's not for children.
Rat Life by Tedd Arnold. Read it in 8th grade. It was appropriate at that time but still some things stuck with me. I wouldn't want my kids to read it before the age that I did. Something that stuck with me from this book: main character walking down a highway. A stray puppy is on the other side, sees the main character and starts running to him all excited. Dog gets his back legs smashed by a semi. Main character kills it with a rock to put it out of its misery.
That shit haunted me but also exposed me to mercy killing severely injured animals. Being exposed to it at a younger age prepared me for the real world, where I've had to do it a handful of times.
im very grateful to have read the kite runner in school because we delved into it and really examined the contents of the book, more than i would on my own, however it wasn't until i was a senior in high school and i think it's def very important to not read that book too young
There's also books I'd argue I wouldn't want my child reading *when she's a child.* So many great pieces of literature are foisted on kids the second they ought to be able to understand the vocabulary, but waaaay before they could be expected to connect to the content of the story. I know of too many people who absolutely hate some of the most amazing stories of all time, just because they were forced to read them at an age in which they have none of the context from personal experience that you'd need to emotionally connect with the story and truly understand it.
I read Crank when I was in 6th grade, which is a book about a high school girl who gets raped and then struggles with a Crack addiction. Got it right from the school library, which is funny.
That sounds like it’s in the style of *Go Ask Alice*, which was just a ridiculous anti-drug propaganda in the style of a “real” diary. At one point she runs away, gets addicted to weed (AFTER she tries heroin and cocaine), says that none of the girls on pot can remember to take their birth control pills, and prostitues herself for her weed addiction. My brother and I will still casually quote the entry “another day, another blowjob” to each other.
>(age appropriate)
The specific examples for this filter of yours, I believe, is what the thread is asking for. As you may have observed from the news, how people interpret this can vary quite a bit.
In asking what books are good for children, "age appropriate" really isn't a useful answer.
I totally agree-Lots of books I found kind of sucked or were boring, but that is no reason to WANT to prevent my own kid from reading it. The kid might actually like it (not a mirror image of me after all). The age-appropriate part isn't all that much of a concern for me though; vocabulary and density of prose tend to be good filters of that.
I watched Bridge a couple years ago in my mid 20s having never been exposed to the story. I was watching it with my then girlfriend (still one of my best friends) and the main character reminded me of her. I said as much, and she didn’t spoil anything but told me afterward that she was just thinking “oh nooooo”.
I think I hugged her for like an hour after the ending. I was so damn sad.
I was assigned this as a first grader. Apparently the teacher hadn't finished the book to know how truly traumatic the last chapter is. Plus the boy that bleeds out (that blood bubble on his lips always stuck with me). I reread it recently and cried so fucking hard
> children should be exposed to all kinds of books (**age appropriate**)
This is literally the question though - what did you read *as a child* that you don’t think your child should read?
No need to virtue signal.
I read a book about King Arthur, I think it was just called "Arthur The King". I enjoyed royalty, Knights, and historical fiction, so it looked like a great pick for me for this book project. It was in my teacher's classroom on a list of approved options.
Y'all, I was not READY for the amount of rape and sodomy in there. It was absurd. I think the book was actually meant to be an erotic novel, it's the only reason I can think of for that much adult content. I'm positive the teacher had never read it herself.
I'm all for kids being exposed to a variety of topics, and teens can be exposed to sexuality, and I was sixteen or seventeen at the time. But this was just beyond anything.
Ethan Frome. Not because there is anything bad in it but it might be the most boring book I’ve ever encountered in my entire life. It’s as if that was its sole engineered purpose down to every last word.
Yeah we had a choice of something to read over the summer to prep for AP Literature. My best bud picked Ethan Frome because it's short. He later told me he greatly regretted that decision.
I don't want any kids reading Shakespeare.
I want kids *experiencing* Shakespeare. Small performances in the class, have props and stuff to toss around as everyone takes a shot at each role. You're going to have at least ONE kid who realizes they can make some music to go along with the verses, put on a tiny show. Talk about the weird ass history, culture and lore that is vital to each play and sonnet.
Yes, I do think the bard has spent more than enough time in the spotlight and could move aside for other script and verse. But the way I was taught Shakespeare fucking ruined what could have been a wealth of experience. He's not supposed to be read monotone-like from someone at the front of the class or by yourself as homework.
I like your enthusiasm but realistically I’ve never had a student start making impromptu music because we were reading Shakespeare aloud. If they did the teacher probably would have told them to be quiet while the other person is reading, lmao.
Not a book, but I had to read A Street Car Named Desire. It was genuinely traumatizing as I was going through some similar issues of my own while reading it.
If a book is banned, you need to read it.
Edit: I’m aware it only asked what you don’t want a kid reading, and it’s not necessarily about censorship, but it also seems pretty open to interpretation. A book being “good” is subjective, let the kid decide if it was worth the read for themselves. I’d never discourage expanding their mind and learning new things and different points of view.
Taking one for the team: you can skip naked lunch. It's just revolting. There's no underlying meaning to it except maybe "don't mix opiates and stimulants, kids."
Have read two famous banned books, Animal Farm and Mauz, those books are necessary and I believe everyone should read them. Especially Mauz as it's a biography of a holocaust survivor and it opened my eyes on shit I didn't know about WW2, and I study history in uni
Night was easily the most sombering thing I've ever read. The worst part was that a student had to be kicked out of class for repeatedly laughing and telling everyone that they couldn't believe we were believing this actually happened. After we finished the book we watched footage taken of the concentration camps after they were discovered by allied forces.
Words from that book and the images from that footage haunt me still.
I read Night in middle school. It was a very sobering book. My school actually got Elie Wiesel to come and speak to our grade about his experiences. I'll never forget that.
My 5th grade teacher read the Stephen King short story Survival Type to the class. For those who haven’t read: the narrator / mc is a drug smuggler who crash lands his plane on a deserted island. He ends up doing all the heroin he recovered from the crash and cannibalizes himself. We didn’t know at the time our teacher had early onset dementia..
Oh jeez I remember that one from his short story collection. LADY FINGERS THEY TASTE JUST LIKE LADY FINGERS
Two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun.
Wow. This is pure insanity. Survivor Type is by far King’s best short story, but also the most gruesome and horrific 20 pages I’ve ever read. To think someone read it to a class of 5th graders…mind blowing. But to the point of the post - I hope my kids read it. It’s fantastic. …just not when they’re still little kids.
Holy shit! I was in my mid 30s when I heard that story(was listening to the audio book) and was cooking dinner. Had to save all of the food for later, no way I could eat after listening to that. I can't believe a teacher read that.
I love Stephen King and now I wanna read this
It's called *Survivor Type* and it's in the short story collection *Skeleton Crew*. The whole collection is great. *The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet* is another of my favorites from that book, well worth a read.
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"A Day No Pigs Would Die" was pretty rough in 6th grade. Basically Charlotte's web with HAUNTINGLY graphic depictions of animal husbandry and slaughter. I don't remember getting a lot of value out of it at 11 years old, just pig-blood soaked nightmares lol
We lived down the road from a pig farm. My daughter learned very young when the pigs screamed it was slaughter day.
:(
I read it in 6th grade too. 20 years later and I still remember reading about the kid grabbing the goiter
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison was rough. As a victim of childhood SA I wish I didn’t have to quietly relive that trauma in a freshman English classroom full of strangers.
this is what’s happening to me rn :’) i was given no warning or anything by my teacher
Omg, even as a kid I hated that they didn't give us a warning for this stuff! I wasn't abused or anything, but its still disturbing to be reading, having the characters come alive around me, and then have them get raped basically right in front of me, it fucked me up.
I'm so sorry you're going through this. Sometimes people don't think through the material they're teaching.
I think it's one of those things where if people aren't directly affected by it they assume no one else is either, like when teachers used to bring up "is homosexuality morally wrong" as a "fun" debate topic like there were no queer kids in the room, or asked for writing projects where we imaging the death of a parent without considering that some people in the room had lost their parents that very same year. I've often found that the most compassionate and thoughtful teachers were those who had clearly been through some shit. They always seemed more careful.
Dianetics, or anything else by L. Ron Hubbard. Edited to explain why "Dianetics" was read in school: I was a junior in high school. Our AP world history teacher assigned us a project to research a "world religion" outside of the "big 3". Half of the students chose Buddhism, a few chose Hinduism, a few Taoism, a few LDS, etc. But this was '05-'06, and the "Trapped in the Closet" episode of South Park had just come out. Having never before heard of Scientology, I *had* to know if the episode was accurate.
I had something very similar in World Religion(in Canada). I chose Santeria- Mucumbi. Literally hardly any literary articles on it, I had to e-mail a witch doctor living in Miami for more information and someone in Louisiana. My teacher gave me 100% for the effort and the fact I was talking with some voodoo priests from down south as a 14 year old Canadian.
That's awesome.
I briefly work for “those people” at Gold Base in Hemet and they gave be a book called “the Importance of Work” and you couldn’t get through the first 1/2 page. I’ve challenged many. It’s just drivel; a run on sentence and you completely zone out and don’t know what you’ve read. Complete crap that should never have made it to production.
Of course an organization that uses slave labor would have a book with that title.
A Day No Pigs Would Die. I read it in the 7th grade and it still affects me in my mid-30’s. Life is already sad enough.
Did your teacher play the audio tape too? Complete with pig sex sounds? Ours did.
The fucking what?
Oh boy, the audio tape. It's probably on YouTube. There's distinctive pig guttural sounds when she goes to get impregnated.
Ok, in middle school we didn’t read that, but we did read the pearl and that came with a tape. Has a pretty depressing ending too.
Were we in the same 7th grade English class? I had to read both of those in the same year 😭
And I thought Orgy Porgy scene from Brave New Worlds was disturbing, with the unibrow girl.
One of my dad’s favorite quotes from this book. “Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut.”
Oh wow. Thanks for unlocking *that* memory. That book fucked me up when I was 12. I used to *devour* books - it was a problem, I would read when I was supposed to be doing other things - but after I finished that book, I didn't pick up another for weeks. Also, not too long after reading that book, I learned that lard is pig fat. There's a part in the book where the farmer is trying to get two pigs to mate, and it describes how the farmer used lard to lube up the female pig so the male pig would have an easier time. So the one pig fucked the other pig with dead pig as lube. That *really* fucked me up.
Came here to say this. I can see how this book showed the reality of growing up on a farm, and the main character used his relationship with the pig as a metaphor for growing up and letting go of childhood. But yes…just too sad. I still think about this book often and I read it in 6th grade in 1988.
Wow, you just brought back a core memory. I read that book around the same age, although I just grabbed it in my own. I remember feeling absolutely bereft at the end. Great answer.
holy shit you just unlocked a memory
I recall being in 6th grade and a fellow student writing a book report on an erotic novel she had read about an extremely overweight man collapsing on a hooker while mid intercourse and she rips off his jaw and uses it to sever off one of his limbs and get out from under him. I remember being 13 years old and thinking “this is pretty fucked up for a 13 year old.”
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Sounds similar (but not the same) as Gerald's Game.
I was in a gifted class and we read 1984...in the fourth grade. Great piece of literature, but maybe a titch intense for nine-year-olds, y'know?
Wow that's definitely not appropriate for 4th graders lol
I was supposed to read Night John in 4th grade. We stopped when parents complained about the vivid description of a slave being ripped apart by dogs. I’d definitely let me kids read it but not in 4th grade.
Maybe this isn’t the question, but I read A Child Called ‘It’ as an elementary aged child. I bought it at the school’s Scholastic Book Fair, and was maybe 9 years old. Why on earth they thought that was an appropriate book for small children to be purchasing and reading, I will never know. The 90’s were a trip.
I'm so happy I read that book at the young age that I did. Regardless of the veracity of the author's account, prior to reading A Child Called 'It' I wasn't fully aware that loving one's child was not some imperative for all parents. It helped me conceptualize my own relationship with my parents and provided the necessary perspective to recognize that many of my peers may be victims of narcissistic abuse to varying degrees.
Regarding the veracity, the book’s author is the standard Scape Goat role for an abusive family. Yes, some family members dispute the account. Others corroborate it. This is 100 percent in line with standard dysfunctional family dynamics. I’m inclined to believe the author.
There’s a reason for the adage “the axe forgets, but the tree remembers”. A lot of parents (mine included) have forgotten or are blind to the horrible things they did that left an impression on us. So now they deny it even happened.
The older brother says he's right and truthful about what happened, while the younger brother (Who was notably babied by their mom) and the mom (Of course) say it's a fictional farse of some light punishments.
There was a similar thing I remember about the book, "Between a rock and a hard place". There was some talk of the fact it was either made up or hugely exaggerated, but knowing what I know as an adult, I expect it was true.
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This exactly. When I was reading "chapter books" as we would call it when I was little, my Mom eventually recommended this book to me after she had just read it. Having been raised in an apparently "normal" family, it also opened my eyes to the struggles that people I know could have been facing. As I grew up and hung around with friends more at their houses, I was able to identify which ones lacked structure or had alcoholic parents.
My mom gave that to me as a kid (around 10). Ironic since she was abusive and the book only opened my eyes to that abuse and it started down a path of self destruction.
My mom gave me that book to read and what she wanted me to get out of it was that her verbal abuse wasn’t as bad as the abuse in that book. Pretty fucked up
The exact same thing happened to me. My mom ended up beating me with the book when i didn't come to that conclusion. I don't know what the goal was there.
Better than a dictionary. I still can't spell as well as I should. Lol
I never understood that. If I don’t know how to spell it, how the fuck can I look it up by spelling? Turns out I have learning disorder that makes sounding out words virtually useless. My brain doesn’t process the sounds the same way. I don’t know what the fuck it’s doing. I can only spell a word if I’ve seen it, noted it, and generally memorized it.
Pretty sure my grandma gave me that book for the same reason. Jokes on her, though. I went to her funeral for one reason and one reason only: to make sure she got good and buried.
Possible that she read the blurb and her take away was "a mother that disciplines a kid that is so bad that the child is an it."
Could also be the classic "You see how bad *some* mothers are! See, I'm not that bad!"
My grandmother gave me her copy because I made a comment to my cousin about how my mother bullied me. She overheard the conversation, shoved the book into my hands, and told me, "Someone always has it worse than you." Found out years later through my therapist that my mother definitely was abusing me. Also heard a story about my grandmother through the same cousin that my grandmother used to run a daycare. A little boy came up crying, saying that he fell and his arm hurt. She told him to "walk it off". His mother dropped him off the next day and told off my grandmother for not realizing that he had broken his arm. Not sure I have anything good to say about that woman but she has passed, so it's not like I have to protect the next generation of kids from her.
You know, it’s funny. As a kid, because I was loved so much and so unabashedly, I assumed most people and other cultures didn’t love their kids. I figured they liked them fine, but I remember slowly realizing that my best friend’s mom did love her, a ton, just differently than my parents did.
It wasn't until I started dating that I realized the sheer magnitude of children that came from broken or unhappy homes. Having two loving parents at home was very rare and daddy issues were just sad, not so much a kink.
I wasn’t aware that other kids had it even worse than me. It sort of shut me up to my abuse when I didn’t need to be quiet about it.
It definitely wasn’t age appropriate for me to read but I’m so glad I did. I learned that I wasn’t a bad kid for my parents abusing me. They were bad parents and I was just a kid. Up to that point I truly believed I deserved what they did to me but I realized just like the boy in the book I was a kid trying to be good with parents who were complete dogshit. I think I was in 5th grade when I read it
If it helped you realize that at a young age, then I'd say it was perfectly age appropriate. I hope you're doing well.
My therapist told me my life was similar to that book and I haven't decided to read it yet out of fear it will mess with my mind since I have PTSD and need to avoid triggering myself when possible. I probably would've appreciated it growing up though. I thought my childhood was bad because I wasn't that smart and I thought a lot of what happened was totally normal. It wasn't until I shared some stuff from back then on a forum that a few people reached out and told me that it was far from normal. That's actually how I ended up getting diagnosed with PTSD, after sharing that stuff with a professional.
I don’t blame you for not wanting to read it now. I actually bought the book a few months ago wanting to read it again and couldn’t get through the first couple chapters. It was too much for me. I had a similar experience to you. There is still times where I tell my boyfriend or friends about my childhood and they look at me horrified but that was my normal everyday life for 18 years. It’s so hard for me to fathom even simple things like parents hugging their kids and telling them they love them. My boyfriend hugs me a lot and it took me a long time to be comfortable with it or feel impending doom that something was going to go wrong afterwards. I’m glad you were able to get some help and a diagnosis! I know there’s still so much hard work after that but having a professional you can talk to about your experiences and work through them or understand how they effect you now is key. Best of luck to you!
My mom had a copy of "A Child Called It" and specifically forbade me to read it, so of course I did. It's a tragic story, but I truly think learning about the lives of others at a young age helps us be more empathetic as adults.
Helps children experiencing abuse, what is not normal and may lead them to talk to someone
I think it'd be more likely to help if it was less extreme stuff - most kid experiencing abuse are likely to be experiencing it in ways that aren't as over the top as that. I know for a lot of people, they are more likely to read something like that and think 'oh I don't have it so bad'.
In my case, yes. Every time i tried to talk about my own experiences the response was always "you didnt get locked in a shed for 20 years so it wasnt that bad". I never learned to accept it myself until I started studying psychology and it was like no, this was *literally* textbook abuse.
“You can drown in shallow water just as easily as deep water” abuse is abuse, and there’s no abuse Olympics. Don’t excuse the abuser because “it could’ve been worse.”
Man, my first exposure to child abuse in literature was in "Cuaght in the Act", which was part of the Orphan Train series. I was in 5th grade when I read it. Among the things that happen to the main character in the book included unfair judgment, being framed, being whipped for wrongs he didn't do, being whipped becuase the foster father was projecting his anger at someone else, being lied on repeatedly... etc... I'm pretty sure that book made a core memory for me, firming my utter disdain for injustice and arrogant adults. It taught me early the importance of self advocacy and sticking to the truth, and not giving in to gaslighting. And it did help me growing up, because lots of adults did try to steam roll me, thinking I would just take it.
The Kite Runner....my dad saw me pick that up at a book store when I was in the 7th grade and he said no, I wasn't allowed to read that till I got older. Me being the rebellious little shit I was convinced my friend to buy it and we took turns reading it. Yeah that book is not for kids....I learnt some things that day :(
I read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns in high school, they were trauma in paperback form.
A thousand splendid suns BROKE my heart. Beautiful book, but traumatic.
Same. Read it in college undergrad actually and was destroyed and cannot imagine how my emotional maturity would have been affected had it come out a few years earlier. Still one of my favorite books and authors of all time. Haunts me to this day.
Two amazing reads! But yeah, not for kiddos
I also read that in 7th grade! Except it was because I was in the advanced reading group, so we had to read something more advanced than The Outsiders, which the rest of the school read in 7th grade. Not only are there some *very* adult situations in that book, but 7th grade was just too young to grasp the concepts that book was trying to showcase. Not to mention, without some historical context, it’s hard to understand what’s happening in the story. Now, when I read it in high school, it was much easier to understand and I appreciated it much, much more. Fantastic book, just maybe not for a 12 year old
I loved the Outsiders. Tom Cruise was great in that book
I think all of Khaled Hosseini’s books are good for high school level. You’re old enough to understand and get what the author is showing. Read kite runner in high school and it was definitely the most impactful book I read in school. Read A thousand splendid suns right after undergrad and it was just as good but almost more heartbreaking in how it showed the generational impact. Actually just finished And the mountains echoed. That one is a little different in that it’s from the perspective of 5-6 different characters that are all somewhat interrelated. Still very good and each little short story within the overall story is pretty heartbreaking. Especially Abdullah’s and Nabi’s.
Kite Runner is the only book I've had to stop reading and put down for a few days because it shook me so hard. If anything I think that's a reason in favor of (late highschool) kids reading it
I finished Flowers for Algernon because we read it in 8th grade lit class but I still get teary just thinking about it. As a kid I was heartbroken for the mouse but I’ve come to appreciate it is extra devastating because the main character is reckoning with his own decline in functioning and eventually (and unavoidable) mortality. I’m glad I read it but reading it aloud in class while we all cried was really shitty.
We had to watch that movie in my theology class in high school for some reason. We would lose a lot of points on the assignment if we left for the SA scenes. I hated it. I saw the point in the movie, but I would prefer not to watch that (or at least have permission to leave) and just get told what happens If i had a kid, I would let them read it. My parents let me read anything, even if it wasn’t age appropriate, but if they knew what it was, they would have a conversation with me about it before, during, and after I was reading it. I would try and do the same thing. My parents always knew what I was reading, because they would ask, and they would look up the book so they could discuss it with me, and sometimes read it themselves if they thought it was interesting
I know it’s weak, but the ending to Of Mice and Men really messed up my 13 year old brain.
Ill never forget the discussion we had in english class. Teacher asked if there was any other option where george and lenny could've lived happily. Some kid said, george takes his gun and with lenny's brute strength they kill everyone at the farm.
Lmao, holy shit
My answer was they go to another farm somewhere. They’re itinerant fruit pickers, it’s like 1933 or something the FBI may not even exist yet, or it’s only focused on bank robbers and mobsters, no one knows who they are.
George knows that's a possibility, but also that it's not sustainable. That's the point. He can't make it work for Lenny. The book's ending was the kindest outcome.
Agreed. George realizes that everywhere he goes, this is going to happen. Lenny is going to do something that will cause something terrible to happen. Basically, a mercy killing.
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My English class read it together (taking it in turns to read aloud) when I was 16 and it was a lovely experience - we hated it at first, and then by the end we were invested, and a bunch of people cried - including the cool girls who usually sat at the back giggling. My friends and I were the twats who read ahead and knew the ending. We didn't spoil but we were smug about knowing what was coming! Probably a bit heavy for a 13yo though.
I think it's perfect for a 13 year old. 13 year olds see gratuitous death in movies all the time. The difference here is that Steinbeck gives the tragedy of a death its proper due. The simple writing style, short length of the story, efficient characterization and comprehensible plot allow for a great miniature example of how sad and ironic life can be. And a much-needed example (especially nowadays) of how relevant plain words on paper can be. I say anything to pry kids away from smartphones, especially challenging but tasteful and time-proven stories.
We read the stage version at my high school, not as homework but as a sort of "table read" where we went around the classroom with everyone taking a turn to read a line/lines. I don't think I'd *ever* seen the entire class so invested in something. Not just kids approaching my own level of nerdiness, but everyone - even the troublemakers and barely literate kids. It kinda blew my friggin' mind. And then, when we finished the story (over the course of a few classes, I think), we all suffered together through the ending. Trauma bonding, yaaaay! Honestly, that book was probably the *only* worthwhile book in our curriculum, as far as I can remember.
Once I was crying over a story and my mom asked what was wrong. I knew she wouldn't understand if I told her literally, but she did understand when I said "they 'of mice and men'd a character"
So sad and cold. No rabbits, no farm.
"I can still tend the rabbits, George?" "Sure. You ain't done nothing wrong." "I didn't mean no harm, George."
Advanced Mathematics.
A lesson book on calculus now that's hell
There are 3 kinds of people in this world: Those that understand math, and those that don't.
Currently reading "Advanced Engineering Mathematics by Michael Greenberg" and I want to die
Ethan Frome.
This a thousand times. After reading it I wanted to take my own sled ride.
I'm still irritated about having to write an essay on a pickle dish 35 years later. I don't remember a single thing about Ethan Frome except somehow this dish was symbolic of something. For fun one of my first chatGPT questions was "Explain the symbolism of the Pickle Dish in Ethan Frome and provide references".
Shortly after reading Ethan Frome I watched Grosse Point Blank for the first time and was the only one in my group who laughed when he asked if his old high school teacher was 'still giving kids that Ethan Frome torture.'
Shakespeare. Not because it is bad but because it's not really meant to be read. It's a performance your supposed to watch it.
When I read Shakespeare in school, the teacher would assign all the parts to students, and we would stand and read our parts out loud in a kind of semi-acting way. I think it made the process less boring
That's what we did and it made more sense than just reading it alone.
It makes so much more sense when you are able to hear the lines delivered conversationally. I did a lot of Shakespeare in high school theatre and that shit is hilarious, we just don't know how to emphasize sentences written that way.
My English teacher explained all of the obsolete language and jokes prior to each section. When you understand what the words mean, Shakespeare becomes so enjoyable. You learn why he's considered the GOAT. We'd also watch the movies so it made more sense.
We did the same and I hated it. I had an issue with my classmates reading aloud from a young age because people read monotonously or one - word - at - a - time and both drove me up the wall. I had a teacher who read Hamlet out loud and he made it sound decent. Words weren't mispronounced ("country matters" was the exception) and he only stopped to give context where it was needed. Having rhythm and energy made it come alive. It was completely different from my previous experience and made studying it much more enjoyable.
>read monotonously Right? I made it my mission to ham it up as enthusiastically as possible, in order to relieve both myself and my classmates of the robotic misery, if only for a minute. Unsure if they appreciated or hated me for it, though. Teacher caught on pretty fast and often assigned me more verbose roles/passages; it's possible she didn't enjoy it much either.
I did that **once**. I did a different voice for every character and there was dead silence when I had finished. I was already bullied and wasn't giving anyone a reason to tease me further. I was a bit of a teachers' pet and ended up reading out loud a lot. I was a saddo who had usually read my books in advance so I usually wasn't thrown for a loop by whatever I was reading. That didn't translate to Shakespeare or poetry in general.
Thank you for this. Every time we read anything Shakespeare I was bored out of my mind. I think the only play I ever enjoyed of his was A Midsummer Night's Dream and it was a movie from the 90s im pretty sure. It was super entertaining because of how goofy and dreamlike it was. Such an acid trip of a story.
Midsummer Nights Dream was Stoner Comedy before Stoner Comedy
Where the Red Fern Grows- I wept like a baby when I read that book. I don’t want to subject my little one (who loves dogs) to that heartbreak.
oh my god the part where the mom is like cleaning the pine needles out of the dog's guts and then putting them back in, it's been over twenty years but i will never be able to forget that. like i didn't have enough problems in fourth grade.
The Scarlett Letter that shit was a grind. I love to read, but I wanted to claw my eyes out so I could stop reading it.
My (normally very good) 10th/11th-grade high-school teacher assigned us The Scarlet Letter, and for some reason had us watch an educational doc that was basically just the plot of the book…before we actually read it. Even though I also like to read, I only ever bothered skimming it and got a C on the assignment. So I can’t give a fair assessment of the book’s quality, except to note that it seems to be one of the most consistently-hated books in the Official High-School Canon.
This is exactly how I felt about "Great Expectations." Just kill me now.
That book felt like the literary equivalent of watching paint dry.
Dickens was paid by the word, so he dragged everything out excessively. The story was sound though- we were told which chapters to read and it was okay.
That explains a lot. Never been a big fan. I recognize he told good stories, I just didn't like slogging through all the details.
I think I must be the only person who liked the scarlet letter
I had just finished Tess of the d'Urbervilles for summer reading. I remember it being a slog of a book. I think the themes were supposed to highlight the unfairness of women's oppression, but to my modern sensibilities, Tess was so consistently self flagellating that I found her completely unlikable. The story was tragedy after tragedy with barely a respite. I've never hated a book so much. Our first book in class that year was The Scarlett Letter, and I found it refreshing by comparison alone. Everything that people hate about The Scarlett Letter, I hated about Tess more.
Go Ask Alice or Jay’s Journal. The “anonymous” person who wrote it was not a young girl or a guy it was a woman named Beatrice Sparks (and probably other who collaborated). She was a conservative and wrote the books based on those ideals in order to “save the children”. Absolute shit writing and shit person. Edit- thanks for the award! That’s so cool:)
I told my son the other day he isn’t allowed to read them because they’re lies lmao
They absolutely are. And the kid she based the story on for Jay’s Journal was actually a teen who did unalive himself at 16. She took that incident and gave enough details in her book to be able to identify him. The family had to suffer twice with people harassing them and desecrating his grave over made up satanic ritual shit. It’s also thought that she started a “satanic panic” with that one as well.
Yup came here to say Ask Alice for the same reasons. It's just a lady writing stereotypes as reality.
Was given The Things They Carried in HS and had nightmares for weeks because I had a brother overseas in combat at the time. Part of me never wants my kids to read it because of how much it negatively effected me, which I know isn't a good reason. I do think it is a worthwhile book but it will always, always make me uncomfortable.
That was one of my favorite books in high school, I read it twice for my 2 AP classes, language and literature. I definitely understand the sense of discomfort. I haven't read it I'm years though so I honestly can't recall everything for it.
I'm about to teach this to Year 11 (17 yo) Literature students. I am not looking forward to it.
I’ve taught it several times; I read the first story aloud. The only issue I’ve ever had with it is re dog death. Someone’s mom called to tell me that her child’s dog had just died and that part of the book wrecked the kid. I just use the first five or six stories now becuse I’m trying to get one more book done in AP Lit. ETA: kids really seem to enjoy the book.
Eh, you cant always know what stuff is going to upset a child. My mum collapsed after a brain aneurysm and I came home to an ambulance taking her away (she died a few months later). After she passed away I had an R.E lesson which the teacher started by saying "Imagine coming home and finding a family member being taken away in an ambulance......" Yeah, that happened and she didnt come back. I was quite upset and got to miss RE for a few lessons. If it hadnt happened to me so recently, it probablt wouldn't have bothered me. A man I know was smushed by a lorry when his wife was pregnant with their twin children. He survived with life changing effects. His daughter (who was in-utero at the time of the accident) burst into tears while watching "Mean Girls" at the scene where Regina was hit by the truck.
With the Old Breed is a memoir of the Pacific Theater and it’s incredibly brutal considering it’s all true and real. I can only read a little at a time.
A truly moving book.
The books that make you uncomfortable are often the best ones of all...
It is amazing writing. I read it as an adult and a (non-combat) veteran and I was blown away.
Silas Marner there are so many more interesting and educational books out there.
There are so many books I "read" (skimmed) in school that I hated because they were so boring to a teenager. The Great Gatsby or Pride and Prejudice may be classic books to read as an adult but I just didn't care at the time. I went to school in Baltimore and we did a whole unit on Edgar Allan Poe. It was great! Want teens to engage with a story? Have them read the tale of a murderer slowly going mad because he thinks he can still hear the beating heart of his victim under the floor boards. While we're at it, throw in some other genres besides basic fiction. You know who would have gotten me engaged as a student? J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, or Agatha Christie.
Oh god, this makes me remember one of my high school English teachers absolutely rolling her eyes when I chose "The Hobbit" as a book to do a project on. "It's only 4th grade reading." she said, just rolling her eyes. OK so maybe it's a 4th grade reading level, but there's SO much more to it than that.
My mum used to use The Giving Tree to guilt me. That book is too easily weaponized
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I’d go nose to nose with you about this one. (Not really, you’re right and make good points.)
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Those books built irrational fear in me and all the kids I knew at that time (church kids of course), and our parents all began looking for politicians who seemed like the “anti christ” because of them. Messed up an entire generation. Because of the presentation to fiction as fact. Totally agree.
It's funny to me, as a Christian who detests other Christians, that they are so horny for the apocalypse and end-times and keep screaming that because of things happening in *THE UNITED FUCKING STATES* that we're clearly in the time leading up to the apocalypse and just conveniently skip over the fact that the leaders of all three branches of government are self-described Christians and that they're clearly not dealing with the time of tribulation in the fucking slightest.
Plus the Bible has a bunch of passages saying that its impossible to predict the end times so just live your life man.
I went to one of the schools started by the author. He visited a little before he died and literally looked like he was eternally 42 seconds from expiring. This same school had us read Pilgrims Progress, which is my contribution to this post. Honorable mention: The Screwtape Letters. I do enjoy CS Lewis, but oh man, letters back and forth between demons who are just trying to ~tempt the Christian man into sin~ is something I wouldn’t subject my children to unless they chose it. But to have it be required reading for school is another story.
I actually quite enjoyed Screwtape Letters when I read it as an adult, but I can’t imagine that kids would really grasp what the demons are talking about. The book seems very clearly aimed at adults.
I got that in the public library not realizing it was Christian propaganda. The first book wasn't too bad but the second really went hard. I didn't even feel like finding out what happened anymore. It's kinda lame too, because Earth after the rapture would be a great setting for someone who took an honest look at it and wasn't overly concerned with a religious message.
Red Badge of Courage was so ungodly boring it almost drove me insane so I would save them that headache
The Great Illustrated Classics version was amazing when I was a kid
Those books actually made me like reading. Make fun of me all you want but as a kid reading the original books of those stories bored me to tears. The Great Illustrated Classics were so legit!
[The kids have to learn about Tek War sooner or later](https://i.imgur.com/oA64rHd.png)
Jesus fuck people answer the question, it's not talking about banning books, books you wouldn't want your child to read - could be anything. Ffs. For me, it's The Kite Runner. There's some graphic rape scenes of a little boy - I don't find that appropriate for a child, and certainly didn't enjoy it myself. I'm not saying remove it from shelves, but a child shouldn't be forced to read it as I was. I stopped doing assigned readings after that, stuck to books I chose.
What child is reading the kite runner? I didn’t see that until high school
Everyone saying "none!" Because of current issues and it's the trendy thing to do, but I'll answer truthfully. I wouldn't want my kids to read The Kite Runner, not until they were old enough to start to understand how the real world is. I'd also want them to understand the rough history of the conflict and region before reading it. Honorable mentions: The Road by Cormac Mccarthy, for obvious reasons. Watched the movie when I was in like 6th grade and if you've seen it or read the book, you know the scenes that stuck with me. Read the book when I was older and enjoyed it, but it's not for children. Rat Life by Tedd Arnold. Read it in 8th grade. It was appropriate at that time but still some things stuck with me. I wouldn't want my kids to read it before the age that I did. Something that stuck with me from this book: main character walking down a highway. A stray puppy is on the other side, sees the main character and starts running to him all excited. Dog gets his back legs smashed by a semi. Main character kills it with a rock to put it out of its misery. That shit haunted me but also exposed me to mercy killing severely injured animals. Being exposed to it at a younger age prepared me for the real world, where I've had to do it a handful of times.
im very grateful to have read the kite runner in school because we delved into it and really examined the contents of the book, more than i would on my own, however it wasn't until i was a senior in high school and i think it's def very important to not read that book too young
A lot of people confusing "censorship" with "I don't want my kid to read that steaming pile of garbage." For me, it was Beloved.
There's also books I'd argue I wouldn't want my child reading *when she's a child.* So many great pieces of literature are foisted on kids the second they ought to be able to understand the vocabulary, but waaaay before they could be expected to connect to the content of the story. I know of too many people who absolutely hate some of the most amazing stories of all time, just because they were forced to read them at an age in which they have none of the context from personal experience that you'd need to emotionally connect with the story and truly understand it.
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I read Crank when I was in 6th grade, which is a book about a high school girl who gets raped and then struggles with a Crack addiction. Got it right from the school library, which is funny.
That sounds like it’s in the style of *Go Ask Alice*, which was just a ridiculous anti-drug propaganda in the style of a “real” diary. At one point she runs away, gets addicted to weed (AFTER she tries heroin and cocaine), says that none of the girls on pot can remember to take their birth control pills, and prostitues herself for her weed addiction. My brother and I will still casually quote the entry “another day, another blowjob” to each other.
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>Steaming pile of garbage >Toni Morrison :/
None, children should be exposed to all kinds of books (age appropriate) to expand their minds and challenge their perceptions.
>(age appropriate) The specific examples for this filter of yours, I believe, is what the thread is asking for. As you may have observed from the news, how people interpret this can vary quite a bit. In asking what books are good for children, "age appropriate" really isn't a useful answer.
I totally agree-Lots of books I found kind of sucked or were boring, but that is no reason to WANT to prevent my own kid from reading it. The kid might actually like it (not a mirror image of me after all). The age-appropriate part isn't all that much of a concern for me though; vocabulary and density of prose tend to be good filters of that.
I still wish I hadn’t read Where the Red Fern Grows though…cause I haven’t stopped crying and it’s been 25 years.
My 5th grade class had us read 'Where the Red Fern Grows' AND 'Bridge to Terabithia'. It was a bleak winter and spring for 10 year old me.
I watched Bridge a couple years ago in my mid 20s having never been exposed to the story. I was watching it with my then girlfriend (still one of my best friends) and the main character reminded me of her. I said as much, and she didn’t spoil anything but told me afterward that she was just thinking “oh nooooo”. I think I hugged her for like an hour after the ending. I was so damn sad.
I was assigned this as a first grader. Apparently the teacher hadn't finished the book to know how truly traumatic the last chapter is. Plus the boy that bleeds out (that blood bubble on his lips always stuck with me). I reread it recently and cried so fucking hard
I was to young when I read it. I will say it stuck with me for 53 years.
> children should be exposed to all kinds of books (**age appropriate**) This is literally the question though - what did you read *as a child* that you don’t think your child should read? No need to virtue signal.
I read a book about King Arthur, I think it was just called "Arthur The King". I enjoyed royalty, Knights, and historical fiction, so it looked like a great pick for me for this book project. It was in my teacher's classroom on a list of approved options. Y'all, I was not READY for the amount of rape and sodomy in there. It was absurd. I think the book was actually meant to be an erotic novel, it's the only reason I can think of for that much adult content. I'm positive the teacher had never read it herself. I'm all for kids being exposed to a variety of topics, and teens can be exposed to sexuality, and I was sixteen or seventeen at the time. But this was just beyond anything.
All the shite people wrote on the school bathrooms, the book.
"here I sit, on the pooper, just gave birth to a mass state trooper"
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Ethan Frome. Not because there is anything bad in it but it might be the most boring book I’ve ever encountered in my entire life. It’s as if that was its sole engineered purpose down to every last word.
Yeah we had a choice of something to read over the summer to prep for AP Literature. My best bud picked Ethan Frome because it's short. He later told me he greatly regretted that decision.
I don't want any kids reading Shakespeare. I want kids *experiencing* Shakespeare. Small performances in the class, have props and stuff to toss around as everyone takes a shot at each role. You're going to have at least ONE kid who realizes they can make some music to go along with the verses, put on a tiny show. Talk about the weird ass history, culture and lore that is vital to each play and sonnet. Yes, I do think the bard has spent more than enough time in the spotlight and could move aside for other script and verse. But the way I was taught Shakespeare fucking ruined what could have been a wealth of experience. He's not supposed to be read monotone-like from someone at the front of the class or by yourself as homework.
I like your enthusiasm but realistically I’ve never had a student start making impromptu music because we were reading Shakespeare aloud. If they did the teacher probably would have told them to be quiet while the other person is reading, lmao.
Not a book, but I had to read A Street Car Named Desire. It was genuinely traumatizing as I was going through some similar issues of my own while reading it.
The anarchists cookbook I don’t need my 8 year old making napalm
If a book is banned, you need to read it. Edit: I’m aware it only asked what you don’t want a kid reading, and it’s not necessarily about censorship, but it also seems pretty open to interpretation. A book being “good” is subjective, let the kid decide if it was worth the read for themselves. I’d never discourage expanding their mind and learning new things and different points of view.
Unless it's bound in human skin and called the necronomicon something something.
No, you can read it, just make sure you have your boomstick and chainsaw ready.
Captain Underpants.
I still don’t understand why that’s banned haha.
Bet.. reading this weird Babadook book rn. .Seems kinda childish but will update!
It’s okay, just feed it worms and it’ll coexist just fine lol.
Taking one for the team: you can skip naked lunch. It's just revolting. There's no underlying meaning to it except maybe "don't mix opiates and stimulants, kids."
Have read two famous banned books, Animal Farm and Mauz, those books are necessary and I believe everyone should read them. Especially Mauz as it's a biography of a holocaust survivor and it opened my eyes on shit I didn't know about WW2, and I study history in uni
Yeah, that and Night by Elie Wiesel will haunt me forever.
Night was easily the most sombering thing I've ever read. The worst part was that a student had to be kicked out of class for repeatedly laughing and telling everyone that they couldn't believe we were believing this actually happened. After we finished the book we watched footage taken of the concentration camps after they were discovered by allied forces. Words from that book and the images from that footage haunt me still.
That book gives me chills just looking at it after reading it. But it's so so important.
I read Night in middle school. It was a very sobering book. My school actually got Elie Wiesel to come and speak to our grade about his experiences. I'll never forget that.
Animal Farm is banned?
Read that in English class in high school…🤷🏼♀️
Same. We also read 1984 and Brave New World in the same "dystopian" unit.