A is for Adam is a kid's book aimed to teach about The Bible to young children. It features rhyming and teaches the alphabet. Unlike most Biblical works aimed at kids, it doesn't water down the Bible, featuring references to animal sacrifice (complete with a bloody dead lamb), Brother–Sister Incest, and Sibling Murder.
The Adventures of Teebo: Despite the youth of the intended audience, the villains openly plan to cannibalize Ewok children, sometimes wear the skins of dead Ewoks, and suffer grim and explicit death scenes.
The Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz, which has a large amount of violence, horror, some swearing, and sexual dialogue.
Alfie's Home, an attack on homosexuals thinly disguised as a story about a boy who was molested by his uncle. Even for the early 1990s, it's... pretty bad. It includes the sentences "Some [kids] called me names like 'Sissy', 'Faggot', 'Queer' and 'Homo'" and "Now, I realize I'm not gay". And it's a picture book, so it was aimed at toddlers. But don't take our word for it: Channel Awesomewill fill you in, along with the entire book's contents.
Much of Animorphs is a deconstruction of Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World, and it's one of the clearest and most prevalent examples of War Is Hell in children's literature. By the start of the last book, The Beginning, they've spent three years fighting a horrific war, just trying to Hold the Line until the Andalites show up and bring enough of a fighting force to stop the Yeerks. None of the main characters are in anything even close to a healthy mental or emotional state. One of them sent his cousin to kill his brother, knowing she'd die too. And she agrees with his decision because she doesn't think she'd be able to function in normal life without the war anymore. Another spearheaded a plot to kill his own mother because she was the host for one of the Yeerks' leaders. A third was trapped in a body—and a species—not his own in the first book. It's much darker than its market would suggest.
The Baby-Sitters Club. The books are aimed at pre-teen girls despite the fact that some of the books deal with racism, divorce, illnesses, death, and at one point abusive parents. Downplayed though, as the books as still very suitable for children.
Bravelands is about a lion cub whose father is murdered by a rogue lion in the first chapter, resulting in Fearless running off in order to survive. This isn't The Lion King (1994), however. Fearless wants to get revenge and kill Titan when he's older. Aside from Fearless' plot, the other two protagonists (a baboon named Thorn and an elephant named Sky) have their own stories full of Family-Unfriendly Death and Family-Unfriendly Violence.
Cat Pack is a series of children's books about a club of cats. They're aimed at 7 year olds at youngest but are particularly frank about nature and death, despite their lighthearted nature. The third book, Carlotta's Kittens and the Club of Mysteries, revolves around the he-cats trying to make sure Carlotta's children don't get killed or eaten. Aside from the overall bluntness of the characters on child death, there's a discussion on neutering and animal euthanasia.
The Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Some of the books are directed for kids, and while the stories are supposed to tug at your heart strings in that sappy, "feel good" way, they sometimes tend to have a series of modern moral lessons stitched together with a collection of serious topics of people dying, dark subjects such as alcoholism, abuse, ugly divorce situations, etc. to learn about the realities of life, even if readers haven't experienced it themselves.
Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul acts as a portable support book, with its tagline promising a collection of happy-go-lucky stories of "Hope, Love, and Laughter." It's supposed to be uplifting since it's Chicken Soup for the Soul we're talking about here, right? But what it didn't mention was that it featured stories that many young readers may find disturbing, especially in the "Tough Stuff" section portion of the book, as it talks on serious topics that go into great detail such as drug abuse, attempted suicide, and tragic deaths. One story talks about how a kid dies breaking their neck when he jumps off a moving train in fear of how far away from home he was, another has someone's friend getting strangled to death while riding in a car, gang violence and almost getting killed, parents doing drugs, another with the parents molesting a little girl for six years, another has the daughter of a drug injection user waking up in her bed one night only see to her horror with a SWAT Team completely surrounding her with their guns pointing directly at her head, and a dog getting hit by a car and getting put to sleep. There is even a section in bold letters called "ON DEATH AND DYING", with a quote stating how everyone eventually dies some day, which can be haunting to kids to read, as death isn't exactly a topic most kids are thrilled to learn about. These are hardly stories suitable for the intended audience, ages 8-13. This would've been more acceptable had these stories been in the teenage/adult Chicken Soup stories instead. There are a lot of parents complaining how these stories made their child cry themselves to sleep, and now many people are being lead to believe that the book is NOT the uplifting, spiritual guide that they thought it was. While the inclusion of these stories were well-intentioned, there's no way they are "chicken soup" for the average kid's soul.
Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul has a very disturbing story in which a father makes a little boy shoot a deer in order to teach him about valuing the time you have left in this life. The father surely could've taught the boy a more humane method of the moral, it would've been understandable had the father mentioned how God put animals to nourish them and that's why they sometimes have to kill them and to be thankful for the life that they were given and not to waste it, but that's not what happened and the way it was said and done could very much bother kids and leave a sour taste in even adult readers. There's also someone's mother getting blown up while working late one night, someone's sister getting caught in a pool drain and drowning, someone's cat getting gassed, and just like Kid's Soul, also features topics on sexual abuse, drug use, and accidental suicide. The intended age is the same as in Kid's Soul.
Averted in the Chicken Soup for the Little Souls series, where they made the stories more suitable for a younger audience. Also, the covers actually fit the overall story. Perhaps the folks who created this spin-off realized how depressing the stories could be for a younger audience and decided to make briefer, happier, and simple (although fictional) stories.
Despite being aimed at kids, plenty of the books from the Choose Your Own Adventure series featured a lot of Family-Unfriendly Violence, often featuring rather gruesome deaths for the main character in the bad endings.
The Cold Moons is about a large group of badgers escaping genocide by badger cullings. It's a long physically, emotionally, and spirituality tiring quest trying to escape the humans. The Cold Moons also features some Family-Unfriendly Death and Family-Unfriendly Violence, such as badgers being killed by cullers (either by gas, dogs, or bullets), badgers murdering one another, and a badger who was mawled by hunting dogs years ago and survived with various deformities.
Any picture books about Dinosaurs will generally have a predator dinosaur graphically eat a herbivore, leaving a gaping hole on the herbivore's side. Not even carnivorous dinosaurs are safe from Family-Unfriendly Death if a herbivore manages to kill the predator trying to eat it, or two carnivores trying to kill each other. Even picture books such as The Magic School Bus manages to depict an Allosaurus graphically kill and eat a Stegosaurus.
The Camp Half-Blood Series by Rick Riordan, because lest we forget a novel series for preteens about Classical Mythology is still about Classical Mythology. It's literally canon that most half-bloods don't live past their teen years, and the main reason Camp Half-Blood exists is to prevent this. And it still doesn't always do so.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: A lot of the horrible stuff is watered down by Percy having the narration of a teenager, but it's still there. The people fighting in the Second Titan War are mostly teens and preteens, and a few of them undergo some pretty horrible deaths. They are basically Child Soldiers and our heroes (themselves kids) even kill a few of them.
The Heroes of Olympus is generally more mature (which makes sense as the characters themselves are more mature). It has torture scenes, family unfriendly deaths, kid-eating wolves, oh and two teenagers travelling through the worst parts of Tartarus, i.e. Ancient Greek Hell.
The Darkest Powers series is essentially the same as its dark, adult oriented The Otherworld sister series except that it's aimed at a younger audience of around 12-16. It's somewhat more toned down. Basically, only the sex and profanity are taken out. Thus we have a series about teenagers trying to escape getting killed (and one of them doesn't) with plenty of Body Horror and Nightmare Fuel sprinkled about.
The Demonata, also by the real Darren Shan, is another ultra-violent horror series involving demons. And just like the Saga, it's meant for kids. Among the not-so-kid-friendly elements:
The protagonist advocating smoking.
The protagonist later witnessing the graphic (and well-described) aftermath of a demon summoning gone wrong.
The twelve-year-old protagonist fantasizing about his uncle's sexy best friend.
Said uncle's sexy best friend also, at one point "accidentally" spills milk all over her shirt, and calls the narrator in to help her out of it.
And, by book five, it all starts to go downhill.
Department 19: With all the grisly violence and gore, you'd expect the novel was for adults.
While Robin Jarvis' Deptford Mice books feature cute animals, their being targeted at children is very questionable because many of the characters are subjected to violent, absolutely horrific deaths such as being skinned alive, decapitated, or having their body slowly eaten away by a deadly poison.
Det Var en gang en sommer ("Once There Was a Summer") is a Norwegian book describing the Utøya terrorist attack to children. While the book is toned down compared to more adult depictions, it still deals with dozens of teenagers being shot and killed, and shows honestly how brutal the attack was.
Most of the people getting up in arms over the blunt descriptions of puberty and other "naughty" things found in The Diary of Anne Frank are forgetting the fact that the book was written by, you know, a 13-year-old girl dealing with things every 13-year-old girl goes through (well, minus the whole Nazi thing). It was a personal diary after all. The controversy is especially funny when you realize that the people complaining about it are implying that Anne Frank was too young to describe her own puberty in her own words.
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is deep (the rats are inventing their own morality as they go), terrifying (the rats face vicious terriers, powerful traps and a Mind Controling villain), and squicky (the "inventing their own morality" includes the idea that maybe they shouldn't eat other rats, or at least not the wobbly green bit, but the eyes are fine).
The Tiffany Aching novels have a preteen (to start with) witch facing various inhuman creatures, including the Queen of The Fair Folk (one of Pterry's nastier villains) and a being of pure hatred towards witches. The next-to-last book begins with an abusive father beating his pregnant daughter into a miscarriage, and nearly being lynched by his disgusted neighbors. All the books also feature references to sex, which become steadily less coded as they go on. Interestingly, Wintersmith and I Shall Wear Midnight don't use the "smaller hardback" format of Maurice and the first two Tiffany books, although they're still listed as "for younger readers". Terry's view is that allDiscworld novels are aimed at anyone who understands the jokes.
Despite Disney Chills being based on Disney movies, the series is incredibly dark with the protagonists often meeting horrifying ends.
The Stephen King book The Eyes of The Dragon was written at the request of one of King's children, who wanted him to write a children's book. However, that didn't stop King from including, among other things, a sex scene. While for the most part it is tamer than King's other books, there's still a lot in there to scar a child for life.
Fairy tales in general fall victim to this trope, most of the time. This trope is Older Than Feudalism, at the very least (of course, that is if you compare our standards with the stories of those times. Back in those days, these stories were to Scare 'Em Straight).
In one version of "Little Red Riding Hood", the wolf tries to get her into bed so he can "devour" her. Variations include him having her strip before getting into bed and tying a rope to her when she tries to get out (under the pretense that she needs to defecate).
The ever so infamous story of The Red Shoes involves a girl cursed to dance by her shoes, until she gets an executioner to chop her feet off.
"Sun, Moon, and Talia", a 17th century fairy tale of the "Sleeping Beauty" type, starts off like the commonly known "Sleeping Beauty". After the princess enters her slumber, however, instead of a simple kiss, the Prince decides to rape her. She becomes pregnant and gives birth while still comatose. She is reawakened when one of her children sucks the magic splinter out of her finger. She then decides that she is madly in love with the Prince. So, after executing the Prince's wife (after the wife tried to burn Talia alive and feed the two children to the Prince), they live happily ever after.
The Gone series by Michael Grant was made with teenagers in mind, but the books contain such extreme violence that a warning is actually required. Features such characters as a sadist with a whip hand, evil talking coyotes who want to end all human life, a girl who can make people see all sorts of unholy terrors, and so on. The fourth book contains people coughing up their organs, and bugs eating people from the inside out. The less said about the last book, the better. It's easy to see why there aren't movies of these books...
Goodnight Mister Tom: For the most part, the story is a heartwarming tale about a scared and impoverished evacuee (Will) bonding with a Grumpy Old ManWith A Heart Of Gold (Tom) in an Idyllic English Village. But what Will'smother does in one chapter when he returns to London is pure Nightmare Fuel. She beats him, locks him in a cupboard with his infant sister, and disappears, trapping him there with the (presumably) screaming baby for God knows how long. By the time Tom comes to check on him the baby has starved to death and Will is barely clinging on to life. Oh, and she commits suicide later, too. Bear in mind that this book is frequently given to primary-school aged children learning about World War II.
The Girl Of Ink And Stars has a premise that sounds innocent enough: the Plucky Girl protagonist must journey into the forbidden forest and use her skills with map-making to find her pampered but sweet best friend. However, the story itself features said protagonist growing up in a town ruled with an iron fist by a cruel Governor (who whips people and does other horrible things) corrupt law enforcers, demon attacks, descriptions of the decaying environment, and, early on, the town being spooked by the brutal murder of a thirteen year-old girl. It's also rife with dark, horrifying events, and features the search party finding a desolate village filled with bones and an 'X' made from dried blood and dog teeth. The book also doesn't shy away with its descriptions of blood, wounds, scars, or how much Isabella's journey is wearing her down, physically and mentally. It's not gory or anything, but it still gets quite dark at times.
The Grisha Trilogy has an in-universe example with the Istorii Sankt'ya, a book of religious stories for children which contains extremely graphic illustrations of saints being martyred.
Umbridge forcing Harry to carve words into the back of his hand. The magic quill carves the letters in Harry's skin, and then magically heals his hand. This leaves no marks at first, but then is repeated until no amount of magic healing can heal the scars from repeated cuts, basically tattooing the words on his hand.
Harry also grows into the world of moral ambiguity increasingly as the books progress and he ages, until a large part of the seventh reads more as a Deconstruction of the Kid Hero trope and associated character tropes than a straight fantasy climax. Especially the Dumbledore material.
The very nature of the one book = one school year ratio forces this. Even if there were no magical elements at all, 17-year-olds in their final year of school face very different issues than 11-year-olds.
The author also had to point out to those that say the first book was much lighter than the others that it does open with a double homicide and the attempted murder of a defenseless infant. The first book also contains: the strangulation of a child, head-bashing, gruesome injury and descriptions of blood, graphic descriptions of burning, and the death of a man, caused by an 11 year old boy who was just trying to defend himself from attack.
The later books also have rape. Voldemort’s mother made a love potion and forced his father to marry her. Subverting Double Standard Rape: Female on Male. While not outright stated, it’s heavily implied that Ariana Dumbledore was gang raped as a 6 year old by some older boys.
The Deathly Hallowsfilm has a scene that caused uproar among Moral Guardians: Naked Harry and Hermione making out — a vision which Ron sees as the locket shows his worst nightmares. Another is Bellatrix writing on Hermione's arm with a knife. Sure, we all know that Cruciatus is worse, but it is perceived as unreal.
1997 children's adventure book Haunted Castle definitely fits this trope, in part because of the amazing art of artist/writer Leo Hartas, which produces images of demented, crumbling paper-mache clones of the protagonists, a man being crushed feet-first by a garden roller while still alive and swimming through the guts of a gigantic fish.
The His Dark Materials trilogy is also mainly aimed at kids and features a world where a human's soul takes the form of an animal companion. It also features what is essentially ripping a soul out of a body, children being kidnapped and experimented on and killed, as well as a messy fight between sapient armored polar bears. And that's just the first book — in the next one, one of the protagonists loses two fingers in a city infested with specters that suck the life out of their victims so they become motionless and die of starvation, and the last book features the visit to the land of the dead.
The Inheritance Cycle is considered young adult literature, which most people interpret as 'teenagers', although many younger children are fans of the series; it can be found in the children's section of libraries and stores, and in primary/elementary school libraries. This is a series where, in the first book alone, there are one or two references to sex (nothing too explicit but still present), rather graphic descriptions of injuries and the after-effects of torture (Arya being a standout example, with at least a paragraph dedicated to detailing her extensive wounds) and the aftermath of a village massacre, including a baby impaled on a spear.
This is a large part of the reason why In the Night Kitchen by the late Maurice Sendak was banned from various school libraries and children's book shops: The child protagonist Mickey loses his pajamas for some reason (Word of God says it was meant to be a symbol of him losing his inhibitions) and ends up naked for a substantial chunk of the story, with his nudity uncensored.
I Want My Hat Back sounds and looks like it is aimed at a very young audience; however, the rabbit being eaten by the bear in revenge is certainly not something you see in most picture books.
The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors: The eponymous Kingdom is a Crapsack World, where the poor are brutally oppressed and the rich engage in literal and figurative backstabbing. At least the last four generations of the royal family have suffered violent deaths at the hands of their relatives or their ministers, and the current monarch is a hopeless idiot completely under his ministers' thumb. There is Incest Subtext between one of the ministers and his daughter. A boy is sentenced to death for a minor offense, and an eleven-year-old girl is tortured. It's also a story for readers aged seven and up.
The Last Dragon Chronicles, with a side order of Mood Whiplash. The first book in the series plays out like a traditional kid's story, with squirrels and magic clay dragons, and would appear to leave no doubt as to who the target audience of the series is. The later books, however, have violence up the wazoo (including one horrifyingly darkDowner Ending), existential crises, and a great deal of speculation on the nature of the universe, which leads to some very messed-up stuff. However, the spinoff wears its kiddie-colors proudly.
Lord of the Flies deconstructs a contemporary genre that was popular with boys. It's a story about a group of boys surviving on their own after being stranded on an island, but it's not a fun adventure story. Things get dark and violent quickly. The book has been included in some children's reading programs, notably ones that were created by and for people who speak English as a second language, and is also a common required reading book in schools.
Mama Ga Obake Ni Natchatta, a Japanese picture book from Nobumi (who is also a character designer for NHK's Miitsuketa! and Okaasan to Issho), is about a child and the ghost of his mother. While the book is intended for ages three and up, some parents complained that it is too emotional and scary for children.
Katharine Tozer's Mumfie novels inspired an animated series from the creator of Thomas & Friends's television adaptation. However, the original books occasionally deviated from the lighthearted tone of most episodes of that series:
Mumfie Marches On was about the titular character in World War II. In said book, the child-aged Mumfie steals a pipe cigar from Winston Churchill for Scarecrow, multiple ways of torturing prisoners are mentioned, Mumfie and Scarecrow use various ways to torture Hitler including puppets, a young girl telling Mumfie and Scarecrow to lock up a man and have him taken away and Jelly telling Hitler "Shut up!" and shoving a rag into his mouth.
In Here Comes Mumfie, Mumfie almost suffocates in a child's stocking, which may make some children concerned into thinking that Mumfie would die, considering the circumstances.
In The Wanderings of Mumfie, an illustration shows a train car with "SMOKING" printed on the window, meaning that Mumfie sat in the smoking section.
Out of the Dust is a popular children's book in America. It's told through poems from the eyes of a teenage girl living through the Great Depression, more specifically the dustbowl. Out of the Dust is nothing but a miserable story about a girl whose pregnant mother suffers graphically described burns in a freak accident and who later dies of her injuries alongside her newborn son. The protagonist herself suffers painful burns to her hands which almost end her piano playing hobby. Her father ends up distant and depressed after all those events. That's not even related to the fact they live in a poor, rural area where dust storms are an everyday occurrence. There is an optimistic ending, but the book is mostly tragedy after tragedy. The author received complaints for how grim of a children's book and has noted that she believes children can handle harsher topics than adults give them credit.
Phenomena: While the main series is dark enough already (not recommended for children under 9), Azur's spin-offs are said to be for younger children. The first 4 books are filled with suspense, he's banned from his home and he's kidnapped and tortured, in the 5th book his brother is seen covered in the blood of innocent people, in the 6th he, himself, is seen covered in blood of innocents eating of an uncensored torn off leg complete with a Slasher Smile, on the cover. Worse still, the books are illustrated so you can see his suffering on every page.
The Jolsah's spin-offs meant for the same age group, aren't much better, it even features a mad man that wants to cut things of Jolsah while alive and an evil man wearing an elf's scalp which the other guy cut off so if they do something bad the elves are blamed.
The 1st book might be a Cliché Storm to some, and then the 2nd book◊ comes. There the Chosen Ones are drawn down into the sand by some beings eating everything, and when Azur protects them and they are "free" to go, the other terraqus'es are mad at him and they eat their own elder instead. When they are accending to the surface are they passing by some terraqus'es eating something, it's mentioned that it looks familiar and quite fresh looking although almost eaten up, and it's heavily implied that it's one of the children's ahmel...
The Polleke Series by Guus Kuijer is a book series about a girl called Polleke, who is 11 in the first book and 13 in the last. The series is clearly aimed at children, yet contains serious themes: the heroine's father is a junkie, her mother divorced and expelled him because of that, one of her friends is a girl who fled from Mexico after her father was killed. And in the last book Polleke comes this close to being molested by a man who lures her in his car.
The Power of Five books are fairly scary and deal with some fairly adult themes.
Redwall. Cute furry creatures killing each other with swords, bows and arrows, spears, poison, and whatever else comes to 'paw'. Multiple instances of murder and torture, not all of it off-screen. Slavery, cruelty, major battles, and almost anyone can die.
Remnants, by the author of the above-mentioned Animorphs. The first book has several instances of gun violence, one character getting Impaled with Extreme Prejudice and dying onscreen, and it ends withthe Earth being destroyed beyond hope of saving, with the reader having no idea what's going to happen to the few humans that made it off-world. It only gets worse from there.
The Restaurant of Many Orders by Kenji Miyazawa, collected in a children's anthology of the same name. The story concerns an eating establishment that kills patrons and cooks them after issuing requests (the "many orders" in the title) that the patrons partially prepare themselves.
Rogue is a novel for and about middle schoolers that deals with child abuse, drug production, alcohol poisoning, gruesome burn injuries, and PTSD.
The Saga of Darren Shan is a kid's book series, but the author himself says that he knows people both above and below the series' age demographics read them. And he includes some pretty pooped-up squawk:
Book two mentions marijuana (or some other herbal drug; it's not mentioned by name) and 'shrooms.
Book eight has a character who, though appearing to be fifteen (and probably around the same stage of puberty as any real teen), is really about 27, first outright saying that he wants to date said real teens ("That's the thing I love about high school girls: I keep getting older, they stay the same age") and then trying to do... something to his much-older teacher (who is very likely younger than him).
Plus, the books are so violent and gory, it's not even funny.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is best known for traumatizing a generation of children with its less than child-friendly illustrations◊. Suffice to say, it spent the better part of two decades holding the top spot in ALA's list of most challenged books, and was only knocked out of the top ten after the publisher caved and re-released it with less disturbing images.
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. A story about a man who murders just about every character in the series trying to kill three orphans to get their inheritance. This includes characters being eaten alive, death by harpoon gun, and the untold unmentionables who didn't escape the hospital fire. Completely justified, since it comes with the Snicket Warning Label.
Skulduggery Pleasant is nominally marketed to preteens. It features the charming adventures of Skulduggery and his young apprentice Valkyrie who spend their time searching for clues and engaging in witty repartee, but at one point, the Grotesquery rips off someone's head, and at another, Darquesse playing football with people's brains. There's lots of Cosmic Horror, and it's Lovecraft Lite at its mildest. Oh, and Valkyrie is a pre-teen/teenager for the first series and this does not stop a) people from physically brutalising her, b) people trying to kill her, c) as she gets older, creepy men hitting on her. It only gets much, much darker from there. The second series goes into in-depth explorations of PTSD and addiction, among other things.
Survivors is a series about dogs surviving on their own after their owners evacuate. It sounds like a nice little adventure, but the series can get rather grim and dark. The main villain of the first arc is a murderous religious zealot who killed her own son and is on a mission to kill other dogs because she believes the Sky-Dogs wish so. Survivors has its fair share of mature themes, including religion and violence, though it doesn't reach the levels of violence as sister-series Warrior Cats.
Lauren Myracle's The TTYL Series have cute covers with 8-bit emoji, and they're about three girls who are friends and are in school, and communicate fully through instant messaging. However, there's lots of swearing, plus mentions of anything sexual you can think of (like masturbation, oral sex, erections, fondling, porn, anything), and glorification of alcohol and drugs. Despite all this, they are marketed towards pre-teens, are sold near kids' books, and have no warnings on them whatsoever about the content inside. To make it even worse, Lauren Myracle has created books that are much less ambiguously for kids.
Chris Priestley's Tales of Terror trilogy is technically children's horror, but the stories in each book center around brutal violence and horrible deaths, usually suffered by children. Each story has a nightmarish Downer Ending, and the illustrations are strongly reminiscent of Edward Gorey.
Throne of Glass is classified as young adult fantasy and for the most part the books' content isn't too different from other young adult series...at least until Empire of Storms, which has surprisingly lengthy and explicit sex scenes for a book aimed at teens. Some of the violence is pretty graphic too, including lengthy torture sequences at the start of Kingdom of Ash.
The Varjak Paw books are marketed for kids, but are full of death, mutilation, starvation, general creepiness, and the implication that the Big Bad is either taking cats and turning them into walking, talking toys or or silent killing machines. Being illustrated by Dave McKean (as is Coraline, above) probably doesn't help much, either.
Wagstaffe the Wind-up Boy is a textbook example of What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? The amount of anger and nihilism that permeates this supposedly funny story is notable; nowadays you'd call it Black Comedy. Everyone is unsympathetic. This book was not written by happy humans. Furthermore, some of the scenes... well... The main character is pancaked by getting run over by a truck, and there's illustrations of that. Amazingly he's still alive when two workmen try to scrape him into a bin bag. Later, after he's been rushed to hospital and the renegade doctor's team turns him into the wind-up boy, they discuss what to do with the left-over organs. "It'd be a shame to waste them on the dog - he's so young and tender." They eat his heart and pancreas. "And very nice it was too", she tells Wagstaffe.
Warriors. It's a series about a bunch of cats living in a forest which is marketed to ages 9-12 and decorated with colourful covers. But as for what's under the covers? As the title implies, there is a lot of fighting in these books, accompanied by pseudo-realistic (and often very graphic) violence. Pretty much every fight ends with every character involved bleeding from at least one gash, and on a few occasions cats have had their throats slit or torn open and bleed to death. And those are some of the average moments. The series goes on to feature cats having their eyes clawed out, getting run over by cars, being crippled, bleeding to death while giving birth, getting mauled by dogs, being ripped open and left to bleed to deathnine times, being slaughtered by an Ax-Crazy mountain lion, impaling said mountain lion with a stalactite, falling off cliffs and breaking their necks, getting crushed by trees, having their tails removed, having a wooden stake driven into their throat, drowning in a series of dark tunnels which they are forced to wander for all eternity, bleeding heavily from gashes in their stomachs, being tortured by extremely bloody nightmares, slowly bleeding to death after being severely wounded by a beaver's teeth, hearing another cat screaming in agony as his stomach is ripped open offscreen, etc. How these books being considered child-friendly has never been challenged by parents or bookstores for all these years is a mystery. Not to mention the fact that it covers themes like racism (although towards fictional races, which technically makes it okay), genocide, moral ambiguity, organized religion, insanity, and war.
Watership Down. Despite what one may think of the movie, author Adams wrote the original book as a bedtime story for his daughters, and has always maintained it was for children. In one edition's foreword, he even talked about how happy it made him to see kids enjoying it.
The Wild Road by Gabriel King is a story about about a house cat going off on a quest when he starts to have sudden dreams that tell him to bring a message to magical cats in a magical land (that only animals, but not humans, can see) to bring them to another location and find a new home in order to protect their long line of feline royalty. While this sounds like a cute, whimsical fantasy story, it's actually more on par with Watership Down and Warriors, with some of the kitty heroes dying in horrific ways on their journey. There's also an evil human character who tortures cats. It doesn't help the fact that he's a sorcerer who disguises himself as a modern scientist, and the depiction of animal cruelty is highly graphic and very disturbing, with felines being experimented on in labs and suffering in general, but the book only tries to subside it as it being a "war" between the scientist and the cats. And in the final battle, many cats lose their lives.
The series is normally a kid-friendly adventure series in a world of dragons, with a few bits of intenser-than-usual violence. (Which is to be expected, as the author was also part of the team that worked on Warriors.) However, some of the books feature surprisingly mature themes, especially the third and fifth books. The third book explores the character of Glory, who is a victim of an especially abusive childhood and deeply ingrained bigotry against her own kind, played very seriously. The fifth book, meanwhile, is all about Sunny, an often looked-down-uponcutie who then proceeds to discover Nietzchean nihilismafter her worldview is shattered. Also, special mention to Darkstalker, which features a character who has PTSD after watching his family be massacred and thinks about self-harm in one chapter, another character having some utterly horrifying visions of the future, another character whose parents are in a seriously dysfunctional relationship, and an ending that involves one of the protagonist using a mind control spell to drag his own father out in public and make him cut his tongue out and then disembowel himself with his own claws.
Then there’s the Graphic Novel for the first book. Have fun seeing things like a dragon being horrifically burnt alive (it’s worse than it sounds), a dragon getting acid on them including the eye, and an uncensored impalement. The only real thing that was censored was hilariously enough a line that mentions a “bar” and the prologue.
The rather infamous Handbook for Mortals claims to be a young adult novel, but all the characters are in their twenties or older, and at several places the text outright mocks not just teenagers, but the YA genre itself. Best guess is that someone told the author it's easier to get attention as a first-time YA novelist than it is in adult genres.
Secrets Not Meant to be Kept is about a toddler sex ring disguised as a preschool. The novel includes restrained descriptions of child molestation and child pornography, as well as references to animal cruelty. The Library of Congress designation for this book is Juvenile Fiction, although most libraries and bookstores will put it in the YA section.
Wolf Pack: The book is billed as being intended for children in grades 5-to-8. Despite that, however, nobody in the book has any qualms about using swear words.
Creators
Roald Dahl could be one of this trope's patron saints, with several of his children's novels serving as near-fixtures on challenged book lists for years. (His adult-aimed fiction falls under this trope's inverted counterpart.) Particularly controversial works include:
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Perhaps kidlit's defining Black Comedy, as naughty children are subjected to a variety of dreadful consequences ranging from near-drowning to falling down a garbage chute that leads to an incinerator. While the novel has the kids survive, they're very much changed for their experiences, and adaptations have played with their fates — they're ambiguous in the 1971 film, and the 2013 stage musical goes with possible Death by Adaptation (if they're lucky, they'll get a Disney Death or rescue, but only offstage). Making matters worse, the factory proprietor has No Sympathy for them and suggests that their survival is merely a possibility. This doesn't even get into adaptation-specific twists and references: the 1971 film has the notorious boat ride and the line "I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate!" The 2013 musical has multiple jokes about alcohol and/or drinking problems amongst the adult characters.
The Witches: The very nature of the witches — a race of child-hating hags who live only to rid the world of them by any means neccessary, the crueler the better — is disturbing enough to put off sensitive adults.
The Underland Chronicles is a book series aimed at older children, even though it contains a massive amount of extreme violence such as decapitation and even disembowelment. Maybe the fact that it's written media and not shown as actual pictures keeps the Moral Guardians away.
The Hunger Games: The age recommendation for these books - 11, 12, 13 - is surprising to some parents, reviewers, and even older teen readers. Maybe it's the inclusion of decapitation, suicide, torture, mutilation, child prostitution, death by fire or venom, being buried alive, and other psychologically and emotionally disturbing content that raises their eyebrows, or maybe it's the fact that Katniss, the viewpoint character and protagonist, is sixteen and the book appears to focus on the fears and themes most relevant to that age group.
Descriptions of the author's next book are interesting too: Year of the Jungle — about her childhood during The Vietnam War — is a picture book for four-year-olds.
Neil Gaiman does not believe in talking down to kids. He has also reached the conclusion that children often enjoy horrific stories more than adults, which dovetails with his observation that, unlike adults, many children know no mercy when it comes to what happens to villains (cf. the deaths of many of the villains in beloved fairy tales).
Coraline is full of distinctly Freudian terror, but the true creepiness of the book isn't always apparent to kids, who might see it as just a book about scary monsters.
The first page of The Graveyard Book involves a family being murdered, and the killer then going after the baby that crawled away. Other loveliness includes the protagonist threatening to mentally torture school bullies, a man being hit by a police car, hangings, and a Fate Worse than Death.
Lots of works by Astrid Lindgren come off as really dark for being children's books, when you read them again as a grown-up.
Mio, my Mio is very much like the first couple of books in the "Harry Potter" saga. That is, it opens with a realistic portrayal of child neglect/abuse, but the protagonist then is taken to a magical world, where everything seems to be lovely and fun, only to realize that he has to fight a really creepy villain, whose very name is enough to scare people, and his equally creepy henchmen.
Sunnanäng was a collection of four short stories, which all push the boundaries for what parents will want to read to their children. In the first story, two little orphans are painfully neglected/abused. And in the second story, another orphan is forced to live in gruesome poverty among a bunch of elderly people (and she also has to give her soul up to make a tree able to play music. And in the third story, we get a pretty graphic description of sheep being killed by a wolf, and a girl gets abducted by the fair folks. And in the fourth story, a feverish boy (who is very close to dying) dreams about him being a knight in Medieval times, who has to sacrifice his life to save his king's life.
Emil of Lönneberga is mostly a light-hearted franchise, but the last book includes Emil saving a new-born piglet from being eaten by his mother, getting "drunk" when he eats fermented cherries and saving his best friend from dying from blood poisoning during a blizzard.
The Brothers Lionheart might still be the worst offender though. The protagonist (a nine-year-old boy) is sick from tuberculosis, but his beloved brother dies before him when he saves him from a fire. And when it seems like the brothers can be happy together in a magical land after death, they have to start fighting an evil dictator and a creepy dragon, and in the end they both commit suicide. (To be fair though, this book has reportedly been a great comfort for terminally sick children.)
Madicken can be rather dark too, especially in the second installment. The neighbor has to sell her body to science, so she can give her alcoholic husband money to pay off the mortgage. Then a girl is publicly caned in front of her classmates in school (she had stolen the headmaster's wallet, but still). And a deranged man almost abducts both of Madicken's younger sisters, and we also have Madicken's crush almost dying from pneumonia.
Despite being fairly new to the kid's book scene, Brandon Mull is pretty good at this.
The Fablehaven series starts off very tame, like most other YA fiction, but when you get to, say, the extreme violence at the end of Book 2, the death-by-dissolving in Book 3, and Naverog's eventual fate (chomped in half, with his bleeding torso stump slumping to the ground), you start to wonder.
The Candy Shop War features the surprisingly vicious John Dart, who has no qualms about binding and gagging ten-year-olds or shooting people's legs almost clean off. Not to mention both books running on twice their allotted helping of Paranoia Fuel.
Pretty much any book by Garth Nix that's labeled as "young adult" (as in, the stuff usually found in the kid's section). For example, there's the series that has living (often unfriendly) shadows, Mind Rape as capital punishment (even for minors), Body Horror, and some rather intense war scenes. Then there's the one with Mind Screw galore, Body Horror monsters, mandatory brainwashing (more literally than the word is usually used) for children, and plenty of death. Oh, and the ending involves the destruction of everything everywhere everywhen. For those of you asking how this can possibly be meant for children, go and read the Old Kingdom books. You know, his teen series.
John Bellairs wrote gothic horror novels intended for children full of all sorts of subtle Nightmare Fuel.
Anything written by Robert Cormier would count here, especially The Chocolate War and Fade (two books that frequently make it to "frequently banned books" lists) but not limited to those two books. His novels were specifically written for older children and preteens but are about anything from terminally ill children being used as live guinea pigs (The Bumblebee Flies Anyway) to a young boy with amnesia who's being marked for death as soon as he regains his memory (I Am the Cheese).
Erin Hunter is actually various writers using one name. They specialize in xenofiction works aimed at the 13 and under crowd. Their books are full of Family-Unfriendly Violence and Family-Unfriendly Death. This even extends to books by the authors under either their own names or different names, such as Wings of Fire. This is ignoring all the dark and mature themes, such as infidelity, mental illness, child death, murder, loss of faith, Teen Pregnancy, etc. There are few things the series aren't allowed to touch (and even then the writers sneak them in, such as implying Jake and Tallstar were in love despite the publishers having a ban on same-gender romance).
Most of Sarah J. Maas' books are aimed at young adults (or are at least marketed to teenagers), yet some of them feature rather graphic and brutal violence, such as lengthy torture scenes. The main part that makes people raise eyebrows though is the inclusion of explicit sexual content; A Court of Thorns and Roses in particular has some installments that border on erotica and many early printings outright come with content warning labels for anyone thinking of buying the books for younger teens. Notably, the fifth ACOTAR book, A Court of Silver Flames, was labelled "New Adult" (generally intended for readers aged 18 - 25), while Crescent City is her first series explicitly aimed at adult readers rather than teens (though beyond featuring more profanity and slightly older protagonists, the content isn't that much different from her young adult series).
Takashi Yanase is famous for the Japanese superhero Anpanman, but he also known for creating several stand alone books that some Western readers might find to be pretty "fucked up".
Little Jumbo is a boy and his elephant tale that has our titular heroes caught up in a war. The story gained a sequel book a few years later called Goodbye Jumbo where the elephant and boy are much older.
The Kindly Lion has an orphaned Lion being adopted by a dog, but he is sold to a circus and grows up without her. He manages to escape, but it only gets worse when the army shoots them dead. Although the story ends on an ambiguous note where its stated that the Lion and his adoptive mother somehow survived getting killed and flew up into space.
