Coraline is pretty intense.
A quote from Neil Gaiman about his editor's daughter, who served as the book's first audience
I told her, "You know, we kind of have you to thank for all this, because you weren’t scared by it." And she said, "Actually, I was terrified. But I wanted to know what happened next. I knew if I let anybody know I was scared, I wouldn’t find out."
The original Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, with the fucked up heroin withdrawal style illustrations
based. The chick from the spiderbite story STILL lives rent free in my memory, that, and the grim reaper pointing
A lot of the original versions of the brothers Grimm stories. For example Cinderella, one of the sisters chops off bits of her feet so that she can try and get into the shoe Cinderella dropped. I think the Prince only figured it out because she's dripping in blood.
Not a book, but as a kid I absolutely loved The Land Before Time.
It's such a terribly sad and traumatizing movie for a young child.
The other night I read my son an old children's book named "Prickly Pie". He wasn't traumatized by it but I could easily see a kid getting traumatized by in. In the story a young hedgehog decides to skip school and ends up being hog tied by a sly fox and almost cooked over a fire.
Hans Christian Andersen fables. At least it traumatised me long ago, unlike any other fairy tale books, which i had plenty.
Antek by Bolesław Prus
Yeah we just gonna shove a kid in the oven for three Hail Marys
So uhhhh no one else read Stephen King's work or the Child Called It series as a kid huh?
Don't know about kids, but "Clifford, the Big Red Dog" sure traumatized Grandma.
