The biggest one I remember reading was the first Sword of Truth series book, because I was a kid when the tv show came out and it seemed cool. I think I had maybe read LoTR and Narnia before that, but little or no other fantasy and didn’t know anything about it and just found it at the library. I don’t remember a lot of other details besides it being unnecessarily long and having weird detail and dialogue, and the unfortunate BDSM torture scenes of the main hero. I didn’t even fully understand or know if it was sexual or not, but I was super weirded out by it. Of course being a 90’s-early 2000’s kid, I didn’t tell or ask my parents or anyone about it.
by Pristine-Board-6701
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My mom
Read a the scariest kids books when we little, but it never bothered us.
I was only 5-7
They were stories about if you suck
Your thumb a Taylor would come and cut it off.
If you always looked up at the sky while walking you’ll fall and drown.
If you play with match you’ll burn and die.
Watership Down. The movie was worse. Literal fields of blood and bunny’s choking to death on barbed wire.
The Velveteen Rabbit. I was terrified of getting scarlet fever for so long.
Stray by A N Wilson. It’s a Black Beauty-sequence story about a cat in the 90s. The cat goes through several living situations, sometimes a pampered pet, sometimes an uncared for stray, and even ends up in a science lab. That’s the bit that haunted me for years. There’s mention of another cat whose eyelids were cut off to allow people to more easily put showergel/shampoo in them. I must have been about 7 or 8.
Old Yeller, Stone Fox, and most of all Where the red fern grows. Basically any book where the climax of the plot was a dog brutally dying and where the red fern grows was the worst because they hit you with 2 dog deaths back to back
I read Outlander when I was far far too young (14) for something so mature (lots of rape if you haven’t read it).
Do beautiful scars count? If so then Flowers for Algernon.
A Day No Pigs Would Die
The Grounding of Group Six
Riki-Tiki-Tavi
Encouraged my fear of snakes.
A Day No Pigs Would Die. A story about a grindingly poor depression era boy who’s father worked as a pig slaughterer. I was about ten when I read it and some of the scenes still haunt me 35+ years later.