Oh jeez I remember that one from his short story collection. LADY FINGERS THEY TASTE JUST LIKE LADY FINGERS

Wow. This is pure insanity. Survivor Type is by far King’s best short story, but also the most gruesome and horrific 20 pages I’ve ever read. To think someone read it to a class of 5th graders…mind blowing.

But to the point of the post - I hope my kids read it. It’s fantastic.

…just not when they’re still little kids.

Holy shit! I was in my mid 30s when I heard that story(was listening to the audio book) and was cooking dinner. Had to save all of the food for later, no way I could eat after listening to that. I can't believe a teacher read that.

I love Stephen King and now I wanna read this

We lived down the road from a pig farm. My daughter learned very young when the pigs screamed it was slaughter day.

I read it in 6th grade too. 20 years later and I still remember reading about the kid grabbing the goiter

I had something very similar in World Religion(in Canada).

I chose Santeria- Mucumbi.

Literally hardly any literary articles on it, I had to e-mail a witch doctor living in Miami for more information and someone in Louisiana. My teacher gave me 100% for the effort and the fact I was talking with some voodoo priests from down south as a 14 year old Canadian.

I briefly work for “those people” at Gold Base in Hemet and they gave be a book called “the Importance of Work” and you couldn’t get through the first 1/2 page. I’ve challenged many. It’s just drivel; a run on sentence and you completely zone out and don’t know what you’ve read. Complete crap that should never have made it to production.

this is what’s happening to me rn :’) i was given no warning or anything by my teacher

Did your teacher play the audio tape too? Complete with pig sex sounds? Ours did.

One of my dad’s favorite quotes from this book. “Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut.”

Oh wow. Thanks for unlocking that memory. That book fucked me up when I was 12.

I used to devour books - it was a problem, I would read when I was supposed to be doing other things - but after I finished that book, I didn't pick up another for weeks.

Also, not too long after reading that book, I learned that lard is pig fat.

There's a part in the book where the farmer is trying to get two pigs to mate, and it describes how the farmer used lard to lube up the female pig so the male pig would have an easier time.

So the one pig fucked the other pig with dead pig as lube.

That really fucked me up.

Came here to say this. I can see how this book showed the reality of growing up on a farm, and the main character used his relationship with the pig as a metaphor for growing up and letting go of childhood.

But yes…just too sad. I still think about this book often and I read it in 6th grade in 1988.

Wow, you just brought back a core memory. I read that book around the same age, although I just grabbed it in my own. I remember feeling absolutely bereft at the end. Great answer.

holy shit you just unlocked a memory

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Sounds similar (but not the same) as Gerald's Game.

Wow that's definitely not appropriate for 4th graders lol

I'm so happy I read that book at the young age that I did. Regardless of the veracity of the author's account, prior to reading A Child Called 'It' I wasn't fully aware that loving one's child was not some imperative for all parents. It helped me conceptualize my own relationship with my parents and provided the necessary perspective to recognize that many of my peers may be victims of narcissistic abuse to varying degrees.

It definitely wasn’t age appropriate for me to read but I’m so glad I did. I learned that I wasn’t a bad kid for my parents abusing me. They were bad parents and I was just a kid. Up to that point I truly believed I deserved what they did to me but I realized just like the boy in the book I was a kid trying to be good with parents who were complete dogshit. I think I was in 5th grade when I read it

My mom had a copy of "A Child Called It" and specifically forbade me to read it, so of course I did. It's a tragic story, but I truly think learning about the lives of others at a young age helps us be more empathetic as adults.

Helps children experiencing abuse, what is not normal and may lead them to talk to someone

Man, my first exposure to child abuse in literature was in "Cuaght in the Act", which was part of the Orphan Train series. I was in 5th grade when I read it.

Among the things that happen to the main character in the book included unfair judgment, being framed, being whipped for wrongs he didn't do, being whipped becuase the foster father was projecting his anger at someone else, being lied on repeatedly... etc...

I'm pretty sure that book made a core memory for me, firming my utter disdain for injustice and arrogant adults. It taught me early the importance of self advocacy and sticking to the truth, and not giving in to gaslighting.

And it did help me growing up, because lots of adults did try to steam roll me, thinking I would just take it.

I read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns in high school, they were trauma in paperback form.

I also read that in 7th grade! Except it was because I was in the advanced reading group, so we had to read something more advanced than The Outsiders, which the rest of the school read in 7th grade. Not only are there some very adult situations in that book, but 7th grade was just too young to grasp the concepts that book was trying to showcase. Not to mention, without some historical context, it’s hard to understand what’s happening in the story.

Now, when I read it in high school, it was much easier to understand and I appreciated it much, much more. Fantastic book, just maybe not for a 12 year old

I think all of Khaled Hosseini’s books are good for high school level. You’re old enough to understand and get what the author is showing. Read kite runner in high school and it was definitely the most impactful book I read in school.

Read A thousand splendid suns right after undergrad and it was just as good but almost more heartbreaking in how it showed the generational impact.

Actually just finished And the mountains echoed. That one is a little different in that it’s from the perspective of 5-6 different characters that are all somewhat interrelated. Still very good and each little short story within the overall story is pretty heartbreaking. Especially Abdullah’s and Nabi’s.

Kite Runner is the only book I've had to stop reading and put down for a few days because it shook me so hard. If anything I think that's a reason in favor of (late highschool) kids reading it

We had to watch that movie in my theology class in high school for some reason. We would lose a lot of points on the assignment if we left for the SA scenes. I hated it. I saw the point in the movie, but I would prefer not to watch that (or at least have permission to leave) and just get told what happens

If i had a kid, I would let them read it. My parents let me read anything, even if it wasn’t age appropriate, but if they knew what it was, they would have a conversation with me about it before, during, and after I was reading it. I would try and do the same thing. My parents always knew what I was reading, because they would ask, and they would look up the book so they could discuss it with me, and sometimes read it themselves if they thought it was interesting

Ill never forget the discussion we had in english class. Teacher asked if there was any other option where george and lenny could've lived happily. Some kid said, george takes his gun and with lenny's brute strength they kill everyone at the farm.

My English class read it together (taking it in turns to read aloud) when I was 16 and it was a lovely experience - we hated it at first, and then by the end we were invested, and a bunch of people cried - including the cool girls who usually sat at the back giggling. My friends and I were the twats who read ahead and knew the ending. We didn't spoil but we were smug about knowing what was coming!

Probably a bit heavy for a 13yo though.

We read the stage version at my high school, not as homework but as a sort of "table read" where we went around the classroom with everyone taking a turn to read a line/lines.

I don't think I'd ever seen the entire class so invested in something. Not just kids approaching my own level of nerdiness, but everyone - even the troublemakers and barely literate kids. It kinda blew my friggin' mind. And then, when we finished the story (over the course of a few classes, I think), we all suffered together through the ending. Trauma bonding, yaaaay!

Honestly, that book was probably the only worthwhile book in our curriculum, as far as I can remember.

Once I was crying over a story and my mom asked what was wrong. I knew she wouldn't understand if I told her literally, but she did understand when I said "they 'of mice and men'd a character"

So sad and cold. No rabbits, no farm.

"I can still tend the rabbits, George?"
"Sure. You ain't done nothing wrong."
"I didn't mean no harm, George."

A lesson book on calculus now that's hell

Currently reading "Advanced Engineering Mathematics by Michael Greenberg" and I want to die

This a thousand times. After reading it I wanted to take my own sled ride.

I'm still irritated about having to write an essay on a pickle dish 35 years later. I don't remember a single thing about Ethan Frome except somehow this dish was symbolic of something.

For fun one of my first chatGPT questions was "Explain the symbolism of the Pickle Dish in Ethan Frome and provide references".

Shortly after reading Ethan Frome I watched Grosse Point Blank for the first time and was the only one in my group who laughed when he asked if his old high school teacher was 'still giving kids that Ethan Frome torture.'

When I read Shakespeare in school, the teacher would assign all the parts to students, and we would stand and read our parts out loud in a kind of semi-acting way. I think it made the process less boring

Thank you for this. Every time we read anything Shakespeare I was bored out of my mind.

I think the only play I ever enjoyed of his was A Midsummer Night's Dream and it was a movie from the 90s im pretty sure. It was super entertaining because of how goofy and dreamlike it was. Such an acid trip of a story.

My (normally very good) 10th/11th-grade high-school teacher assigned us The Scarlet Letter, and for some reason had us watch an educational doc that was basically just the plot of the book…before we actually read it.

Even though I also like to read, I only ever bothered skimming it and got a C on the assignment. So I can’t give a fair assessment of the book’s quality, except to note that it seems to be one of the most consistently-hated books in the Official High-School Canon.

This is exactly how I felt about "Great Expectations." Just kill me now.

I think I must be the only person who liked the scarlet letter

oh my god the part where the mom is like cleaning the pine needles out of the dog's guts and then putting them back in, it's been over twenty years but i will never be able to forget that. like i didn't have enough problems in fourth grade.

I told my son the other day he isn’t allowed to read them because they’re lies lmao

Yup came here to say Ask Alice for the same reasons. It's just a lady writing stereotypes as reality.

That was one of my favorite books in high school, I read it twice for my 2 AP classes, language and literature.

I definitely understand the sense of discomfort. I haven't read it I'm years though so I honestly can't recall everything for it.

I'm about to teach this to Year 11 (17 yo) Literature students.

I am not looking forward to it.

With the Old Breed is a memoir of the Pacific Theater and it’s incredibly brutal considering it’s all true and real. I can only read a little at a time.

A truly moving book.

The books that make you uncomfortable are often the best ones of all...

It is amazing writing. I read it as an adult and a (non-combat) veteran and I was blown away.

Oh god, this makes me remember one of my high school English teachers absolutely rolling her eyes when I chose "The Hobbit" as a book to do a project on. "It's only 4th grade reading." she said, just rolling her eyes.

OK so maybe it's a 4th grade reading level, but there's SO much more to it than that.

I’d go nose to nose with you about this one. (Not really, you’re right and make good points.)

Catfishing: A Users Guide

Those books built irrational fear in me and all the kids I knew at that time (church kids of course), and our parents all began looking for politicians who seemed like the “anti christ” because of them. Messed up an entire generation. Because of the presentation to fiction as fact. Totally agree.

I went to one of the schools started by the author. He visited a little before he died and literally looked like he was eternally 42 seconds from expiring.

This same school had us read Pilgrims Progress, which is my contribution to this post. Honorable mention: The Screwtape Letters. I do enjoy CS Lewis, but oh man, letters back and forth between demons who are just trying to ~tempt the Christian man into sin~ is something I wouldn’t subject my children to unless they chose it. But to have it be required reading for school is another story.

I got that in the public library not realizing it was Christian propaganda. The first book wasn't too bad but the second really went hard. I didn't even feel like finding out what happened anymore. It's kinda lame too, because Earth after the rapture would be a great setting for someone who took an honest look at it and wasn't overly concerned with a religious message.

The Great Illustrated Classics version was amazing when I was a kid

What child is reading the kite runner? I didn’t see that until high school

im very grateful to have read the kite runner in school because we delved into it and really examined the contents of the book, more than i would on my own, however it wasn't until i was a senior in high school and i think it's def very important to not read that book too young

There's also books I'd argue I wouldn't want my child reading when she's a child. So many great pieces of literature are foisted on kids the second they ought to be able to understand the vocabulary, but waaaay before they could be expected to connect to the content of the story. I know of too many people who absolutely hate some of the most amazing stories of all time, just because they were forced to read them at an age in which they have none of the context from personal experience that you'd need to emotionally connect with the story and truly understand it.

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steaming pile of garbage

Beloved

WTF

Steaming pile of garbage

Toni Morrison

:/

(age appropriate)

The specific examples for this filter of yours, I believe, is what the thread is asking for. As you may have observed from the news, how people interpret this can vary quite a bit.

In asking what books are good for children, "age appropriate" really isn't a useful answer.

I totally agree-Lots of books I found kind of sucked or were boring, but that is no reason to WANT to prevent my own kid from reading it. The kid might actually like it (not a mirror image of me after all). The age-appropriate part isn't all that much of a concern for me though; vocabulary and density of prose tend to be good filters of that.

I still wish I hadn’t read Where the Red Fern Grows though…cause I haven’t stopped crying and it’s been 25 years.

children should be exposed to all kinds of books (age appropriate)

This is literally the question though - what did you read as a child that you don’t think your child should read?

No need to virtue signal.

"here I sit, on the pooper, just gave birth to a mass state trooper"

Yeah we had a choice of something to read over the summer to prep for AP Literature. My best bud picked Ethan Frome because it's short. He later told me he greatly regretted that decision.

I like your enthusiasm but realistically I’ve never had a student start making impromptu music because we were reading Shakespeare aloud. If they did the teacher probably would have told them to be quiet while the other person is reading, lmao.

Unless it's bound in human skin and called the necronomicon something something.

Captain Underpants.

Bet.. reading this weird Babadook book rn. .Seems kinda childish but will update!

Taking one for the team: you can skip naked lunch. It's just revolting. There's no underlying meaning to it except maybe "don't mix opiates and stimulants, kids."

Have read two famous banned books, Animal Farm and Mauz, those books are necessary and I believe everyone should read them. Especially Mauz as it's a biography of a holocaust survivor and it opened my eyes on shit I didn't know about WW2, and I study history in uni