Really weird kids’ books from the past

[aweebitlost]

I was reading the DC The Elephant & the Bad Baby tonight and it struck me how very odd it is.

An elephant takes a baby for a joyride to nick a load of food and then everyone is cross with the baby for not saying please?!

Then there’s the Long Slide with the 3 stuffed animals that climb a giant slide, vomit, meet some witches etc and don’t seem to get any pleasure out of the experience.

AIBU or were some kids’ books from the past plain bizarre?! Any other good ones people can think of?

'Not Now Bernard.' Where a monster eats up a boy, and the boy's parents are so preoccupied that they don't even notice that there's a monster there instead of Bernard!

Hans Andersen's 'The Red Shoes' - REALLY creepy!

Many of the old fairy tales are even weirder; but I think most of them didn't start out as specifically children's stories.

Eric the Wild Car (and sequels) from the 70s. Lovely, but very weird. Definitely some interesting drugs involved in the writing of them.

@pandaeyes44

Enid Blyton's Mr Pinkwhistle. Creepy perv was invisible and often loitered around in childrens bedrooms. There was also one story where he stole a bullies trousers and made him run home in his pants. A product of its time but quite odd and a little sinister now.

I had one of those books called Mr Pinkwhistle Interferes

Loved the Mr Pinkwhistles!

Even the name now sounds like a double entendre

Judith Kerr was very clear, in her lifetime, that The Tiger who Came to Tea was about nothing more or less than her time as a desperately bored SAHM who hoped anybody at all would come to tea on rainy days just to break things up.

I love Not Now Bernard and still do. It was my dad's favourite and he read it to me with much relish. I don't think these books scar children at all; they fascinate and intrigue them. Children love morality tales. As Margaret Atwood writes in The Robber Bride, where the 7yo twins are very clear about the outcome of the Three Little Pigs: "Somebody had to be boiled."

Oh wow I thought I’d imagined this book! It used to be in the doctor’s waiting room and I distinctly remember a story about a mother and baby dying in a fire. The fireman ‘found them together’ and they went to heaven. Or something.

That book ‘Uncle Arthur’s stories’ that is.

I love Not Now Bernard and still do. It was my dad's favourite and he read it to me with much relish. I don't think these books scar children at all; they fascinate and intrigue them. Children love morality tales. As Margaret Atwood writes in The Robber Bride, where the 7yo twins are very clear about the outcome of the Three Little Pigs: "Somebody had to be boiled."

I'm reminded of my friend and myself as kids marching round the house chanting the rhyme, picked up from somewhere:

'Billy in one of his nice new sashes
Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes.
Now, although the room grows chilly,
I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy!'

Ogden Nash wrote a poem about children's literature, which concluded:

'It really doesn't take much to fill their cup.
All they ask is for somebody to be eaten up.'

I love lots of these books. Agree that Changes is.. trippy. We read Bear Hunt when I was in reception at school and I’ve read it so many times to my DC over the years I know it off by heart. It’s my favourite children’s book of all time I think. I love Mog books, the illustrations make me laugh.

I'll tell you what did used to worry me as a child: my granny's prayer about "If I die before I wake".

"Is that a thing that... happens to children?"

Also love Not Now Bernard but I do think the monster is Bernard. He’s clearly desperate for attention, his parents are neglectful! I love Mo Gilligan reading lots of these books, not now Bernard is a funny one.

Mrs Pepperpot. She always helped people learn life lessons then grew to her own size in time to make her husband pancakes for tea.

@Earthrocknroll

That book ‘Uncle Arthur’s stories’ that is.

Ooh, Uncle Arthur! Although, as suggested by my previous post, I was fairly tough-minded about stories and rhymes that were obviously fictional, the Uncle Arthur stories were supposed to be true, which made them much scarier. I don't think I read the story you mention, but I was really scared by one about two naughty children who get into their uncle's unlocked car, and touch the controls, and the car starts running away with them. They are saved at the last minute by a brave neighbour, but for ages after that I was really afraid of stationary cars suddenly starting to run away with me in them, or over me if I wasn't in them. To this day I sometimes have nightmares about that. A few years ago, I had a vivid dream that I was visiting people in a big house in London, and Tony Abbott, who was then PM of Australia, was also there. He told me to go out and sit in his car to mind it and it suddenly started to run away with me in it.

Does anyone remember a book called Pickled Onions? 🤢

@skybluee

I remember reading Plague 99 when I was young and it really upset me!

I enjoyed that when I read it, but I wouldn't choose it right now: not exactly cheerful reading for pandemic times.

I love love love Mr Pinkwhistle. Going around giving out Karma. I wish he'd bring me some. I'm sure I don't deserve all the shit I get!

@Pudmyboy

OP I loved The Long Slide (" 'heads below' shouted Jacko!" when the other toy vomited). Wasn't there a Big Swing as well? I remember reading an odd story about a child who drew a house and visited it in dreams, at one point scribbled over the windows then in the dream the windows were barred, and there were some strange sinister creatures trying to get in: I can't remember what it was called but was scared by it

I think that is 'Marianne Dreams' by Catherine Storr. I really liked that, but can see how it could be scary.

Since people have mentioned 'Flowers in the Attic'' - I will mention the adult book that I read as a child, that really scared me. It was Dr. David Reuben's 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex'. I read it when I was about 12. I mainly took from it all the gruesome details about the various sexually transmitted diseases that one could get - this was pre-AIDS, but there were still a lot of diseases (mainly tropical ones) that I'd never heard of, as well as the well-known ones like syphilis and gonorrhoea. My friend read it at the same age, and she mainly took from it some apparently quite homophobic stuff about gay sex. She became quite homophobic herself for a while, but fortunately got over it well before adulthood!

@TheSpiral I tracked down a copy of Help! I’m a Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory for my daughter to read - you remember much more of the plot than I did! We make a podcast together about her reaction to books I read a long time ago, and most of this episode is me going, ‘What? Really? Aliens?’ The author often worked with Spike Milligan and wrote a bizarre-sounding play called The Bedsitting Room in which, apparently, a character is concerned that he is in fact a bedsitting room.

@Talipesmum

Aha got it - The Wind on the Moon, by Eric Linklater. There was a scary illustration of a baddie that still slightly haunts me. And also My Friend Mr Leakey - though that’s probably more eccentric than weird.

The Wind on the Moon was one of my favourite books when I was a child, and I re-read it very few years. Yes, it's a completely mad story but it has some brilliant characters. Overall it is a very happy book, and in many places it is very funny but there there is one bit that still makes me cry - more than fifty years on from when I first read it.

I also loved Ant and Bee though even as a child it was obvious that the stories were rather contrived!

As far as books that I first encountered as a parent are concerned, I agree with a previous poster about Owl Babies, which I didn't like at all. We all enjoyed Bear Hunt though.

[quote YesILikeItToo]@TheSpiral I tracked down a copy of Help! I’m a Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory for my daughter to read - you remember much more of the plot than I did! We make a podcast together about her reaction to books I read a long time ago, and most of this episode is me going, ‘What? Really? Aliens?’ The author often worked with Spike Milligan and wrote a bizarre-sounding play called The Bedsitting Room in which, apparently, a character is concerned that he is in fact a bedsitting room.[/quote]
That sounds like a fantastic podcast - could you point me to it? By private message if you don't want to out yourself here (but no problem if you don't want to).

YY to the podcast! That sounds amazing!

I shall send you both messages!

OP I had both the Long Slide and The Long Dive as a child and absolutely loved them. They were based on toys owned by children of the authors. As a child I saw nothing wrong with meeting witches, nearly being knocked off ladders by a sonic boom or sliding under rainbows or even cooking a meal on the sea bed . Barley was pathetic though

Who remembers Burglar Bill who lived in a stolen house and slept in a stolen bed eating stolen food - he steals a baby by accident and ends up being burgled by its mother (who was also a burglar) seeing the error of his ways putting everything he'd stolen back, becoming a baker and marrying her!