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?

@saraclara

...and they went rumpeta rumpeta rumpeta ALL down the road!

Ah, the nostalgia.

Loved reading that one to DD until we lost it (think it got left behind on a holiday in France) but it seems weird referring to it as a book from the past because in my mind that is just a year or so ago - though actually DD is now 26...

@TotoAnnihiliation

My uncle bought me a selection of books including one called 'The children that lived a bath.' The parents go missing, the landlord kicks them out and the local farmer lets the family lived in his barn. A lady from the local authority puts the onus on Susan the oldest daughter to look after the family.

In more modern books, the dinosaur that pooped - I think they are awful, DD laughs like a drain every time she forces me to read them.

@TotoAnnihiliation It's "The Children Who Lived in a Barn" and it is an absolutely cracking good book. One of my favourites. I still have it. Read it to DD when she was small and she loved it too.

Can't imagine why you think it weird. Dated yes but not surreal weird like most of the books mentioned on this thread

Peter Pan is very much of its time - the lost boys were babies who fell out of their prams and their Nannies didn't notice.

@YourenutsmiLord

Peter Pan is very much of its time - the lost boys were babies who fell out of their prams and their Nannies didn't notice.

I always thought it was an allegory for the child dying, as was commoner in those days.

@ZoeTheThornyDevil I liked Elidor, re read it so many times!

@Coronawireless

my introduction to the phrase barrack-room lawyer

I had to Google this and have realised that I’m a barrack-room lawyer on mumsnet

What startled naive me was that it was used pejoratively. I really had no concept of the kind of snobbery that would use someone being smart and motivated to learn against them.

I loved the Indian in the Cupboard! It was a bit weird, but cleverly thought out - the Indian wasn't just a plastic figure come to life but a real person brought through time and space and miniaturised. I remember a WW1 medic being brought to life to help the Indian when he got injured, and when Omri tries to bring him back a second time, the cupboard only shows a pile of folded clothes and his doctor's bag, because he was killed in real life. I also remember the author incorporating the 1987 hurricane, which noone saw coming, as a Wild West typhoon brought back through the cupboard - that was brilliant!

5foot5 Can't imagine why you think it weird. Dated yes but not surreal weird like most of the books mentioned on this thread

It is a bit weird... Their parents go missing somewhere and nobody thinks to check up on the kids and make sure they're not living in an outbuilding somewhere? It just seems to be like, 'Oh, well, parents are MIA Hope the kids do alright!'

@Luckingfovely

I read Each Peach Pear Plum endlessly when the DC were young... and yes, there's something odd about it, but I still can't figure what.

Here's my nemesis - again one that I read all the time - and then read an interview with someone in a Sunday Newspaper magazine (I think) - about The Tiger Who Came To Tea.

And the interviewee said that she didn't like it because it was about a paedophile.

It's bothered me ever since. Any thoughts???

Wtf?! He's only interested in food!

The Hairy Toe. Quite terrifying when you're 6!

@Darbs76

Maybe not weird but one of my favourite childhood books was Phoebe and the hot water bottles. It was taken out of print as a firebrigade complained as it might make children think they could put our fires with hot water bottles, then get a puppy as a gift! Lol. I tried to purchase a copy for my own kids, but it goes for over £100

Oh, we had that book, I loved it! I wonder if my mum still has it...

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.

It gave my ds nightmares for months. I had to get rid of it!

@MONSTERSALAD

5foot5 Can't imagine why you think it weird. Dated yes but not surreal weird like most of the books mentioned on this thread

It is a bit weird... Their parents go missing somewhere and nobody thinks to check up on the kids and make sure they're not living in an outbuilding somewhere? It just seems to be like, 'Oh, well, parents are MIA Hope the kids do alright!'

They do check up on the children-that's half the story with the older ones trying to stop the interfering lady from the council taking the younger ones to an orphanage. They children wish everyone would leave them alone.

If parents going missing and children surviving on their own is weird, then half the books I loved at a child were weird.

@Luckingfovely

I read Each Peach Pear Plum endlessly when the DC were young... and yes, there's something odd about it, but I still can't figure what.

Here's my nemesis - again one that I read all the time - and then read an interview with someone in a Sunday Newspaper magazine (I think) - about The Tiger Who Came To Tea.

And the interviewee said that she didn't like it because it was about a paedophile.

It's bothered me ever since. Any thoughts???

Are you sure the interviewee wasn’t talking about the Cat in the Hat? I’ve heard that referenced in terms of “ stranger comes into house when mother is out, tells children to keep it a secret from mum” (although I’m not sure the cat does tell them to do that or if they just decide not to tell her themselves - or actually we don’t know what they decide in the end). Never heard it about Tiger who came to Tea though and can’t see how it could even be thought! Both Cat in the Hat and Tiger who came to Tea are “about” letting exciting and slightly dangerous chaos into the ordered and safe home, managing it, and letting it out again. Same as Where the Wild Things Are.

Babar the Elephant, and the Alfie & Annie Rose series, beautifully illustrated by the author Shirley Hughes.

Yes beautiful samsmum, but weird?

@Pemba Which one do you think is weird?😄

An everyday story of an elephant royal family? What's weird about that? 🙂. But I don't think it's particularly out there for children's literature is it? I haven't read them properly though I must admit, just had a pop-up Babar book as a child.

@TheSpiral
“ Are you sure the interviewee wasn’t talking about the Cat in the Hat? I’ve heard that referenced in terms of “ stranger comes into house when mother is out, tells children to keep it a secret from mum” (although I’m not sure the cat does tell them to do that or if they just decide not to tell her themselves - or actually we don’t know what they decide in the end). Never heard it about Tiger who came to Tea though and can’t see how it could even be thought!
Both Cat in the Hat and Tiger who came to Tea are “about” letting exciting and slightly dangerous chaos into the ordered and safe home, managing it, and letting it out again. Same as Where the Wild Things Are.”

-I think it’s stemming from this ancient Zoe Williams article which talks about both of them: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/may/15/zoe-williams-antinatal-children-books (tongue in cheek re the “dangerous subtexts” in children’s books)

Loads of children's literature has absent parents - either explicitly or implicitly. Being freed from parental restraint enables adventures most books would be pretty dull if on page one Mum said no baby you can't go off with a bear/dog/elephant/friend /all alone and picked up the baby and put them in their cot.

@Runningupthecurtains

Loads of children's literature has absent parents - either explicitly or implicitly. Being freed from parental restraint enables adventures most books would be pretty dull if on page one Mum said no baby you can't go off with a bear/dog/elephant/friend /all alone and picked up the baby and put them in their cot.

Yes but then the baby revved up his car vrum chug a chug and drove off as fast as he could. And the mummy couldn't catch him.

@samsmum2

Babar the Elephant, and the Alfie & Annie Rose series, beautifully illustrated by the author Shirley Hughes.

Do you think the Alfie books are weird? Why? They are lovely.

Not sure if this has been mentioned but I recall a book about a boy called Wagstaff. He got run over and reconstructed with a sort of tin man's body, which meant he could do a wee out of his finger! His parents were very neglectful and ended up going down the Niagara Falls in a plastic crate.

Even writing that makes me feel trippy but I assure you it did exist

@TotoAnnihiliation

My uncle bought me a selection of books including one called 'The children that lived a bath.' The parents go missing, the landlord kicks them out and the local farmer lets the family lived in his barn. A lady from the local authority puts the onus on Susan the oldest daughter to look after the family.

In more modern books, the dinosaur that pooped - I think they are awful, DD laughs like a drain every time she forces me to read them.

I really liked 'The Children Who Lived in a Barn'. Yes, horrifyingly tough on the kids; but it was published in the 1930s, and probably not unrealistic for the time.

Th great dog bottom swap is very strange subject matter material but quite funny!