inappropriate children's books

Hi I am looking for inappropriate children's books for my class' assignment. If anybody suggest any books you think inappropriate, please tell me. Thanks!

I can't think of any, but you might look at a list of banned or challenged books to see what other people object to.

Inappropriate in what way? Can you clarify a little?

Thank you for replying. I am looking for inappropriate books (Possibly picture books for age3 to 8 years old):

* Promote negative behavior
*Undermine children's intelligence
*Exhibit lack of respect for people, animals and nature

Some people think Junie B. Jones promotes negative behavior but kids know how naughty she is and is an example of what not to do.

I know there is a book about farting but I don't know the title.

I don't know that this is inappropriate because the supposed message seems like a good one but I remember being traumatized by this book and haunted by it for years without remembering its name. I ran into at a store awhile back and felt nothing but revulsion at the memory.

Donkey-Donkey

Here are other people's reactions too: http://www.whatsthatbook.com/?xq=79

The Donkey cuts his ears and the idea and the illustration of the blood.... ugh. It was inappropriate for me as a child.

-Kim K

I know certain people have objected to Shel Silverstein's poetry books because the kids in the poems behave badly. I think they're a hoot, personally.

While it's a pretty little book, I have a problem with Tico and the Golden Wings, because the message it sends is that you have to be like everybody else in order to be liked/accepted.

Ha ha - I remember reading this library book to my daughter about a kid who goes for trips flying on geese - and on about four different occasions I found myself fudging the descriptions of how the kid got up onto the goose, until I decided beyond a doubt that there was something very creepy about the author. I'd be happy to look it up, but I guess I'd like to know more about your class. This wouldn't be something you're going to read to kids, right?

Hello Everyone, thank you for your help! I am taking this children's literature class in my college. I have to find some inapproptiate books for children. I went to the public library today and asked the librarian but she couldn't locate it...
Criteria are:
* Promote negative behavior
*Undermine children's intelligence
*Exhibit lack of respect for people, animals and nature

Thanks....since I wasn't raised in this country, I don't know much about American children's books.

Thank you! I will get it from library.

The most inappropriate book for kids I've heard of is the recent bestseller Go the f**k to sleep by Adam Mansbach. Although that's not so much a children's book as a book about children.

Another controversial one is Good Families Don't by Robert Munsch, which is about farting, if I remember correctly. Some parents were offended by it, and actually tried to ban it from school libraries, if you can believe it.

Thank you! I will get this from the library nearby.

Thank you for your help but neither of books were available at my library. :(

Hmm - sounds like a difficult assignment (we've all had plenty of those!). The Paper Bag Princess COULD be considered inappropriate, if you're REALLy in a pinch. It's about a princess who decides she doesn't need a prince - it's quite a comment on feminism - I LOVED reading it to my daughter. And I'm pretty sure just about any library would have it. And Junie B. Jones is really cynical and way too honest for most grownups (I love her though). Captain Underpants (sort of) and I've never seen the books (although I have confirmed they're available) any Malcolm in the Middle story should suffice (I'd send my daughter outside to play with her friends when it came on and laugh until i'd roll off the COUCH).

PS: I'm sorry for your assignment - I feel like those are bad examples, and I'm having a HECK of a time thinking of anything better, and we had almost every children's book ever WRITTEN cross our threshold at one point or another.

There's always the Triumvirate of Mediocrity (Rainbow Fish, Love You Forever, and The Giving Tree) - some people love them, some people hate them, but their messages have certainly been questioned by various people.

I vote for The Giving Tree for sure. That one always bothered me. It's more about the Taking Boy.

--Kim K

Lane Smith runs a great blog dedicated to this very topic which has some very funny (inappropriate) books on it, see Curious Pages here: http://curiouspages.blogspot.com/
Lots of excerpts and humorous analysis of books that promote bad behavior or show a lack of respect - it should give you hundreds to look through and see if any tickle your fancy (or are available in your library)...

Another great (but rather less amusing) resource for you may be Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature by Julia Mickenberg - this book collects forty-three mostly out-of-print stories, poems, comic strips, and other texts for children by twentieth-century leftists which encourage questioning the authority of those in power. (Although I should note I don't think these books are inappropriate for children, some people might.)

Do let us know which books you decide on in the end!

Edited: Double post

Well, As a mom, I never liked the very popular children's book Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed. When my child was about two and a half, that was the featured story at library story hour. I wish I knew ahead of time, we would have skipped story hour that day. My kid follows any suggestion without thinking ahead. As soon as we were home, the jumping started - oh what fun, til the next day when he jumped off and hurt his chin on the edge of the bed.

I'm kind of prickly, and there are several other popular books that I felt taught suggestively bad behaviors. The Curious George books come to mind.

I would avoid any book where the character ran away. At the toddler age group, I avoided The Runaway Bunny even though it ended nicely.

Even Winnie the Pooh can teach that it's OK to mean the first and second time. There are lessons to be learned, but the characters are mean and thoughtless to each other while learning those lessons. We did read a lot of Winnie the Pooh; but after a while I was thinking I had made a mistake because my kid started not even trying to be nice until required.

Captain Underpants series!

RMRM, foggidawn,Keeline,skullduggery,DK1010,reconditereader, Thank you so much!

Love You Forever is one of the most awful books - scary and inappropriate. It is for adults, not children. I don't like Robert Munsch in general. The original Curious George stories are quite racist, but the ones made from the early TV series are benign. And things like The m and m Counting Book are just advertisements. And licensed character books are insulting to children's intelligence... Disney is revising the endings to lots of classic stories.

While I do not think there is such a thing as an inappropriate book for children, blatant propaganda like Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed will always be lacking class.

I was never bothered by Love You Forever at all. The "mother with boundary issues" aspect would possibly occur to adults, but I think children gloss over that without the scary thoughts. (I guess my mind just doesn't work that way. It never occurred to me that Mama was a stalker.)

The world goes around, the mother ages, the boy is a man and a father...he rocks his mother, he rocks his baby, and the world keeps going around. Not scary to me at all.

It's scary because preschoolers expect the adults to take care of them not the other way around. Developmentally inappropriate!

Walter the Farting Dog, imo, is very inappropriate for our precious children. It promotes carte blanche farting amongst youngsters -- and dogs! -- and who knows what other irreprobate behavior it may cause among kids.

For more info, my review of this awful children's book is here.

Try the picture book Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite. It's about a little boy whose parents were divorced a year earlier and whose father now has a boyfriend, Frank. Daddy's Roommate was initially published in 1990, just one year after the really excellent picture book Heather Has Two Mommies and seems to have been an effort by the publisher to achieve gender parity by introducing a gay male couple.

The problem is that Daddy's Roommate is overly simplistic. Most notably, the little boy's mother explains to him that his father and Frank are gay, that being gay is just one more kind of love, and that love is the best kind of happiness. I find it highly unrealistic that most women would be that supportive of their gay husbands right after a divorce, and a child of divorce really needs more realistic discussion of divorce, same-gender partnerships, and the reality of probably squabbling ex-spouses.

Willhoite also illustrated the book himself, and he just doesn't have the talent for illustration that we find in books like Heather Has Two Mommies, Molly's Family, or In Our Mothers' House, the last of which in particular has great illustrations.

Daddy's Roommate also depicts a somewhat older child, who goes to a ballgame, talks to strangers at the beach, and works in the garden, activities which may not be relevant to a child at the picture-book stage of reading.

All in all, I consider Daddy's Roommate a failure.

You might also, though, want to consider In Our Mothers' House. It's really a great book, but some of the themes (the children grow up, their mothers grow old, and their mothers eventually die and are buried together) may be too mature for children at the picture-book stage. It's a wonderful story and the illustrations are fantastic, but I suspect this is a book whose charm might appeal more to lesbian parents but might be a little difficult thematically with young children.

What's the picture book with a child who colors on everything - Harold! Just plain BAD EXAMPLE. Nothing redeeming about it.

31>> Hmmm. Well, if coloring everything is objectionable, then that's a problem with In Our Mothers' House (see @30), where the two mothers don't seem to object when the boy slides down the bannister and takes the finial with him or when the two-year-old girl covers the wall next to the fireplace with a beautiful charcoal sketch.

Again, In Our Mothers' House may appeal more to lesbian parents and not be completely appropriate for their children.

My son knew about death and wondered about our (his parents) death when he was 5 yo. I think books that touch on themes that aren't part of their normal everyday lives, like those In Our Mothers' House, are good for introducing topics to our younger kids that we can then talk about together. They bring up questions that our kids have that we may not have been aware of.

33>> Valid point. Still, In Our Mothers' House might be useful to the OP because there's a difference between parent-child reading and classroom use, where the lack of one-on-one may pose difficulties.

Though this is probably far too late to be of use to the original poster, I thought I'd mention it for the sake of conversation.

I'm reading a children's book called Spellbound. In the first 60 pages, the 12-year-old protagonist is repeatedly cruel to her 6-year-old brother, even tricking him into being enslaved by a group of subterranean goblin-like people.

A Separate Peace for 10-year-olds?

Inappropriate is relative. The most controversial book I recently read is The Golden Compass. Pullman attempts to prove through this trilogy that God is dead, religion is evil, parents are selfish and power hungry, sin is good, and so much more. Reading his interview and treatise on life is about as controversial as you can get.

> 36

"Pullman attempts to prove through this trilogy that...sin is good..."

Sin is good? Funny, I missed that one in my reading...

Diary of A Wimpy Kid series is very popular amongst third graders. Although the book's themes are engaging and promote literacy with this age group, I feel it is essential to first explain many of the events in general to the kids that the boys' behavior (many of the things he does and says) is not acceptable. It can actually be a very good lesson in character development.

I have to recommend books for 5th grader. Do you think "Diary of A Wimpy Kid" is not good one?

I have a possibility, Geraldine's Blanket by Holly Keller. Geraldine, a little pig, has a blanket that she loves. Her parents harrass her to get rid of it and keep trying to take it away and finally the poor little thing cuts it up into a doll dress so she can keep it. Basically this teaches that you need to hide things and not tell your parents the truth about how you feel because they'll tease you? Nice.

A Nest for Celeste is a charming animal story, but I'm a little concerned about a children's book set in a Louisiana plantation in 1829 that makes no mention of Black slaves. In fairness to the author, it's an animal story about friendship, kindness to animals, and so forth, but I'd be concerned about using it with school children without pointing out the omission (which sanitizes antebellum plantation life) and giving them some guidance.

We recently read Ghosts Do Splash in Puddles by Marcia Thornton Jones. The plots is that some kids annoy a school janitor until he quits. They do this because they think he's ghost and his quitting is the happy ending. Such a lovely story...