We’re curious: what book did you read during high school that you wouldn’t want your kids to read?
Survival Type – Stephen King
“My 5th-grade teacher read this to the class. The narrator is a drug smuggler who crashes his plane on a desert island. He ends up doing all the drugs and cannibalizes himself.”
“[It is] the most gruesome and horrific 20 pages I’ve ever read. To think someone read it to 5th graders… mind-blowing.”
“I was in my 30s when I heard that story (audiobook) and cooking dinner. Had to save the food for later. No way I could eat after listening to that. I can’t believe a teacher read that.”
A Day No Pigs Would Die – Robert Newton Peck
“[This] was pretty rough in 6th grade. Basically, Charlotte’s Web with HAUNTINGLY graphic depictions of animal husbandry and slaughter.”
“I read it in 6th grade too. 20 years later, and I still remember reading about the kid grabbing the goiter.”
“I read it in the 7th grade, and it still affects me in my mid-30s. Life is already sad enough.”
Dianetics – L. Ron Hubbard
“I had something very similar in World Religion. I chose Santeria-Mucumbi. I had to email 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.”
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
“As a victim of childhood SA, I wish I didn’t have to quietly relive that trauma in a freshman English classroom full of strangers.”
“Sometimes people don’t think through the material they’re teaching.”
1984 – George Orwell
“I was in a gifted class, and we read 1984 in the fourth grade. Great piece of literature, but maybe a titch intense for nine-year-olds.”
“Wow, that’s definitely not appropriate for 4th graders.”
A Child Called It – Dave Pelzer
“I read [this] as an elementary-aged child. I bought it at the school’s Scholastic Book Fair and was maybe nine years old. Why they thought that was an appropriate book for children to be reading, I will never know.”
Caught in the Act – Joan Lowery Nixon
“I was in 5th grade when I read it. 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, sticking to the truth, and not giving in to gaslighting.”
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
“[The] Kite Runner is the only book I’ve had to stop reading and put down because it shook me so hard.”
“For me, it’s The Kite Runner. There are some graphic scenes of a little boy – I don’t find that appropriate for a child, and certainly didn’t enjoy it myself.”
A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
“I read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns in high school. They were trauma in paperback form.”
“A Thousand Splendid Suns BROKE my heart. Beautiful book, but traumatic.”
Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
“I finished Flowers for Algernon because we read it in 8th-grade lit class, but I still get teary just thinking about it. I’ve come to appreciate that it is devastating because the main character is reckoning with his decline in functioning and eventual mortality.”
Of Mice & Men – John Steinbeck
“I know it’s weak, but the ending to Of Mice and Men really messed up my 13-year-old brain.”
“The 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.’”
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
I was given The Things They Carried in HS and had nightmares for weeks because I had a brother overseas in combat at the time. Part of me never wants my kids to read it because of how much it negatively affected me. I do think it is a worthwhile book, but it will always, always make me uncomfortable.”
Go Ask Alice – “Anonymous”/Beatrice Sparks
“The “anonymous” person who wrote it was not a young girl. It was a woman named Beatrice Sparks. She was a conservative and wrote the book to ‘save the children.’
“I told my son the other day he isn’t allowed to read them because they’re lies.”
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
“The Road by Cormac McCarthy, for obvious reasons. Read the book when I was older and enjoyed it, but it’s not for children.”
Arthur The King – Unknown
“I read a book about King Arthur called ‘Arthur The King.’ It was in my teacher’s classroom on a list of approved options. I think the book was actually meant to be an adult novel. I’m positive the teacher had never read it herself.”
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