Read at your own risk

A list of the books that scarred me as a child

Happy New Year, dear reader! I hope you had a restful and restorative holiday season (or at least a few moments of calm in the chaos). I last wrote about my favorite books of the year, all of which are things I would re-read. As I sat down to write a post this week, I got to thinking about the inverse: What books will I never read again? Immediately, a few came to mind.

The books that stick out the most in this category all happen to be things I read as a child. They each disturbed me in some way and to such a degree that I refuse to revisit them. In case you are curious, here is the list in question. (There are also a few spoilers, so read at your own risk.)

That one scary story about Jenny and her neck ribbon

Starting off strong with “The Green Ribbon,” which is technically an urban legend-turned-short-story found in Alvin Schwartz’s In a Dark, Dark Room. It’s about a young girl named Jenny who always wears a green ribbon around her neck. For years, despite her husband’s fervent questioning, she insists she can’t tell him why—not yet, at least. When they grow old and she gets sick, Jenny finally tells her husband he can remove the ribbon so he can see why she’s had to wear it. He does so and her head falls off. As fun as it was to read and tell scary stories as a kid, this one was more visceral. What perhaps made the story all the more disturbing were the illustrations that accompanied it (see Exhibit A below). I am, however, pleased to report I am not the only person who was scarred by this, as seen by this BuzzFeed article.

Exhibit A, via BuzzFeed.

The Velveteen Rabbit

I know it’s a classic, but I hate it. I hate it because it hurts. Truthfully, I barely remember anything about this book aside from how depressing it was (and the fact that my mom would cry every time she read it to my brother and me). As a highly-sensitive child who attributed feelings and consciousness to inanimate objects, this book was excruciating. I recall the bunny’s owner, a little boy, getting sick and the bunny being abandoned. It was simply too much for my tender heart at the time and honestly, even now. Never, never again.

The Island of The Blue Dolphins

I’ve mentioned this one before in a post about my extreme aversion to alone-on-an-island stories and it has therefore earned its spot here as a book I will never ever pick up again. I can still feel the pervasive sense of emptiness this book evoked in me as a mere fifth grader. Reading it felt like torture. In summary, a young girl and her brother are accidentally left behind by their tribe when they move away from the island. As if that’s not bad enough, her brother proceeds to get killed by wolves. The girl manages to domesticate the wolves, but then, of course, they also eventually die. Time and time again the girl is left alone. What’s worse, it’s a story inspired by true events, which means someone actually went through something like this and that is simply too much for me—a now fully-fledged adult with abandonment issues—to fathom or cope with. As an emotionally abandoned child, I didn’t understand the grief I felt when reading this godforsaken book. I can only imagine how much worse it would be now that I do.

Tangerine

This book, and especially its cover, feel like a fever dream to me. I randomly recalled it recently, remembering it as a book I read in seventh grade about a kid who is semi-blind and whose school collapses into a sinkhole. Upon looking up the summary, it appears it also includes underground fires, houses infested by termites, a boy who is killed by lightening, a boy who is killed by the main character’s evil brother, and the main character’s mysterious eye injury revealed as his evil brother’s twisted form of punishment (i.e. spray paint in the eyes) for being caught graffitiing public property. It was just one horrific event after another culminating in a nightmarish roller coaster I prefer not to ride again.

Where The Red Ferns Grow

I know this book is beautiful in its own right and perhaps I can steel myself to revisit it again someday (though I highly doubt it), but as a fourth grader and a dog lover, it broke me. I will never forget how my class read the whole thing aloud popcorn-style¹ and when we got to Big Dan and Little Ann’s final scenes, only myself and my friend Marissa were in tears. No one else was crying at the the absolute devastation. Spoiler: LITTLE ANN DIES OF A BROKEN HEART. NAME SOMETHING MORE HEARTBREAKING AND TRAUMATIZING THAN THAT. For this reason (and the fact that I’m literally tearing up as I write this), I simply do not think I could make it through this book again.

Honorable mention: Flowers For Algernon

This was another book we had to read for school, and truthfully, I don’t recall much of it (despite getting to read it in my own bedroom and not aloud in class). However, I distinctly remember our teacher letting us watch the movie and me excusing myself to sit out in the hallway because I couldn’t stop sobbing. In case you are unfamiliar, it’s the story of a man with a cognitive disability who gets an experimental surgery to improve his IQ. It works for a while until he slowly reverts back to his old self. It won a Hugo Award for Best Short Story, but holy hell was it heartbreaking. How anyone could sit and read, let alone watch, something like that without shedding a single tear is beyond me.

On this uplifting note, I’ll leave it here. However, I am very curious to know if there are any books you would never read again—especially ones that traumatized you as a child. Together we can form a support group or something. 🤪

1. Popcorn-style reading was when the teacher would nominate one person to start reading, then that person could pick anyone they wanted to start reading the next section, and so on. Unfortunately, it did not involve actual popcorn.