Well I posted this in the books section as well, but didn't get much of a response. Out of curiosity, this is being asked to aid in a story i'm writing, what childhood books (i'm looking more for the classics) would be the worst to end up in for you? By which i mean to be right in the middle of the action, to physically be part of the story.
Depends on what you mean by worst....do you mean like the books that would kill me if I was in them? Or the books that would make me lose the will to live if I was in them?
There aren't really any children's books that are downright terrifying unless you go back about 80 years, although kids with enough imagination can be frightened by the strangest things. I was frightened by the 'Red Room' scene in Jane Eyre when I read it at the age of 9, but of course that's not a children's book. In my grandfather's house there were plenty of books to give children nightmares--an old copy of Strewelpeter was the worst, particularly the story of the Scissorman and the gory illustrations. There was also an original Grimm's Fairy Tales which had belonged to his mother, dating from the 1850s. The worst there (for me) was The Goose Girl and The Girl Without Hands. Nothing could be scarier or more perverted than those stories.
i agree that pretty much any of the old classic fairy tales would be the worst stories to find oneself stuck in...
Anyone here familiar with Doric nursery rhymes? Doric as in northeastern Scots? Well, good. They're innocently perverted, considering that they were written by generations of five-year-olds in the European capital of 19th-century education (perhaps the more tame version of modern rap?)
I would have to say Little Red Riding Hood. What is scarier than a talking wolf who eats your grandmother than you whole and then you have an axe cutting through it's belly to let you out. Not sure which is scarier, the being eaten part or an axe chopping through such a small space. P.S. My hubby says Hansel and Gretel would be his scariest.
I had to laugh at this one, because I've BEEN in Hansel and Gretel--you know, that place where you find yourself somewhere you don't want to be and can't find your way home because the birds ate the breadcrumbs. Sure, I'm speaking metaphorically, here; but tell your hubby, he's right--it's a damn scary place! I LOVED fairy tales when I was a child, and I'm still trying to spin gold out of straw. That is the real truth of fairy tales, isn't it? It's either scary or an impossibly ideal happy ending. I grew up on Anderson's and Grimm's and whatever else there was in our little library, and although my own "Mr. Charming" was once a prince (again, metaphorically speaking, of course), that prince-thing doesn't last forever in the same pure form as it once seemed like it would. And I didn't make it very long emulating Snow White, either. (Blame it on the dwarfs.) I dunno. I never had any problem as a child understanding that fairy tales weren't "real," and I wasn't frightened by any of 'em. Today, I'm not so sure if the scariest ones don't teach the best lessons.
