This week Guardian's Sam Leith wrote an article, here, about how children's books aren't scary enough anymore, and Alison Flood (also from Guardian) blogged here about how many of the books she read as a child turned out to be Not Very Good upon rereading as an adult.
I read voraciously as a child. Here are a few of the things I read:
- Dr. Seuss books- excellent adult reading, not scary
- Winnie the Pooh- still worth reading, not scary
- The Chronicles of Narnia- still worth reading as an adult, mildly scary
- L.M. Montgomery's books- still worth reading, not scary at all
- The Babysitters Club- Not Very Good after all, not the least bit scary
- Nancy Drew- OK (but they are all a bit similar after a while), mildly scary
- Heidi, Pollyanna, etc. etc.- good books I'm sure, not scary
If we are talking under 12, the main books I owned and read were:
ReplyDeleteEnid Blyton Books
The Narnia Books
GOOSEBUMPS!
I loved Goosebumps, and any other books which had anything remotely scary now that you mention it. My friends and I used to talk to eachother about the "coolest" parts in Goosbumps books, and whether the TV episodes of the books were any good lol.
As a child, a Goosebumps book was quite enough to keep me mildly terrified. So can you imagine what happened when a family friend decided, "Rae likes horses. She'll love this book called The Red Pony by this dude John Steinbeck!" It freaking HORRIFIED me [spoiler: pony dies tragically] and I still can't bring myself to complete it now.
ReplyDeleteCoraline's pretty scary, but I can't think of any others.
-Raelene
The first novel I ever read was Pipi Longstockings when I was about 6. My love for reading also started at a young age, it wasn't remotely scary, of course.
ReplyDeleteThough, you know that classic fairy tales book that all of us at work are hooked on? Vanessa told me the real story of The Little Mermaid by Anderson a couple of weeks ago and I just read it myself-if I was a child reading that I'd be terrified if not scarred haha. I also liked the part in the introduction where it says "cruelty and violence have often been seen as the signature of German fairy tales...". So true.