Four Classic Kids’ Books that are Darker Than You Remember

With his latest, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman returned to writing novels for adults after a 7-year hiatus. But the book centers on a life-changing series of events that occurred in the narrator’s childhood, and it opens with this killer epigraph, by Maurice Sendak: “I remember my own childhood vividly. I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn’t let adults know I knew. It would scare them.”
The truly great children’s book writers (Sendak and Gaiman among them) never forget the dark and cobwebby corners of children’s minds, where imagined things are no less vivid than reality. And some of the best kids’ books have about as much violence as your average episode of CSI (Speaking of, CSI: Wonderland. Can somebody make this a thing?). Here are some classic kids’ books that are darker, stranger, or just plain scarier than you remember them:
Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie
Child abandonment, homicidal grownups, survival of the fittest, and abduction: all themes from one of the greatest children’s books ever written. If you only know Peter from the movies or the play, you’ve got a treat coming to you. Peter Pan, a boy who (as far as he can recall) fell out of his pram, toddled off, and was raised by fairies, starts lurking around the windows of the Darling family’s London home, hoping to hear their bedtime stories. One night, when the Darling parents are at a party, Peter spirits their three children away, to live with him and the Lost Boys in Neverland. Along the way, the sociopathic Peter repeatedly forgets who his companions are, and when they arrive, the eldest child, Wendy, is shot out of the sky (she narrowly survives). Barrie writes chillingly of Peter’s near-death experience (“It will be an awfully big adventure to die”), his supernatural abilities (“When children died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be frightened”), and the mysterious means by which he sizes the Lost Boys to fit through the entrance of their underground home (“Peter does some things to you, and after that you fit”). Pan is arguably the most fascinating character in kids’ lit, the spinning point at the center of the novel that you can stare at but never quite see.
The Witches, by Roald Dahl
No list of dark minds in children’s fiction would be complete without an appearance by Dahl. The famously misanthropic writer populated his bedtime books with torture-happy headmistresses, cruel aunts, gluttonous children, dead or neglectful parents, and murderous supernaturals. In The Witches, an orphaned little boy (dead parents, check) is being raised by his grandmother, who doubles as an expert on the child-hating witches that he must always be on guard against. He soon encounters a whole fleet of the creatures, who turn him into a mouse. Any other kids’ book would end with his happy restoration to human form, but not this one: even after vanquishing the witches, the little boy is doomed to stay a mouse forever—and by his grandmother’s calculations, he has less than a decade to live. He doesn’t mind this, as he’d hate to outlive his elderly grandma. Way to keep the mortality of our mother figures at the forefront of our minds, Dahl.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
Classic teen heroine Francie lives a hardscrabble life with her disillusioned mother, Kate, and her alcoholic, underemployed dad, in a series of Brooklyn tenements. Kate’s hard-won realism encompasses her dispassionate desire for her husband’s death, and her efforts to hide her preference for Francie’s brother, Neeley. In one unforgettable scene, Francie is narrowly saved from becoming a victim of a child rapist and murderer, and her father’s inevitable death by alcohol is finally spurred on by the news that his wife is pregnant with another child they can’t afford. Oh, and remember when the women in Francie’s neighborhood literally stone a single mother and her baby, because the woman dares to show the illegitimate child in public? The book is full of casual outrages like this one, as seen through Francie’s increasingly worldly eyes. I identified with Francie the watchful bookworm 100% as a kid, despite the stark disparity (lucky me) between our situations.
The Last Battle (The Chronicles of Narnia), by C.S. Lewis
In the final installment of the Narnia chronicles, Lewis kills off his beloved Pevensie family in a train accident, sending all of them (including their parents) into Aslan’s Country, as Narnia is beset by evil and gives way to an end-times Paradise.
Did I say all of them? I meant all of them except for Susan. Queen Susan the Gentle, once crowned with her siblings at Cair Paravel, is left on earth to suffer for her sins—her “sins” being her interest in “nylons and lipstick and invitations.” Yep, Susan became a conceited party girl, allowing Lewis to devise the most horrific possible punishment for her: losing her entire family in one go. Is this not insane? Does it not darken your reading of all the other books she appeared in? Why, Lewis, why?