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An evil wizard makes a killer robot whose eyes are actual people eyes. CAN'T SLEEP CLOWNS WILL EAT ME.
In this book, a young girl who named Hannah is more interested in hanging out with her friends than studying for her upcoming bat mitzvah. She gets magically transported to a concentration camp so she can better understand what people went through. I get sending a kid to bed without dinner, but sending a 13-year-old girl to Auschwitz to teach her a lesson? I didn't sleep for weeks after reading this one.
Incest is NOT best.
In this book, a girl keeps a diary of her life, which ends up spiraling into drug addiction and eventually death. I found out years after reading it that the book was a hoax, but the damage had already been done.
Puberty is never easy, and reading a book where a girl talks endlessly about the minutiae of her period does not make it any easier.
An evil wizard makes a killer robot whose eyes are actual people eyes. CAN'T SLEEP CLOWNS WILL EAT ME.
Every single Lurlene McDaniel book ends the same way: somebody dies (usually, after a long and noble battle with a terminal illness), and everybody cries. In the hands of a hormonal teenage girl, these books were stronger than a dozen Lifetime movies.
The one where the girl had a ribbon around her neck to keep her head from falling off? And the one where the girl's parents brought her a hairless chihuahua from Mexico? And the one where the spider laid eggs on a girl's face? These books resulted in many a terrifying slumber party.
A girl's sister dies of leukemia, and she spends the book learning to deal with it. This makes Lowry's Number the Stars (which is about the freaking HOLOCAUST) look positively upbeat.
Regina Morrow did coke once. And then her heart exploded and she died. This book kept countless young women from ever trying cocaine.
This was the first book I ever read where a character died, and it was emotionally devastating. Between this and Where the Red Fern Grows, it's no wonder I was a morose kid.
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I read some of these books when I was younger but they never really mad me cry or anything.
My third grade teacher (who was in her twenties then) always read us books aloud, a little every day. She decided to read us Bridge to Terebithia, and omg the whole damn class bawled. She had to comfort all of us and then she never read us another sad book after that.
Out of extreme curiosity (and also because of my extremely weird personality and messed up manner of thinking) I’ve decided to read these books…Doesn’t that sound dandy? :)
In 4th grade, our teacher had reading time every day after recess. We had a little alcove in the room where everyone grabbed blankets and pillows and tucked in to hear the story. We read books like The Giver and Number the Stars. But the most heart-wrenching for me was Zlata’s Diary. It was a diary from a young girl in Sarajevo. I can just remember thinking, “Oh my Gosh, this girl is my age!” It was just incredibly sad.
oh my god, Where the Red Fern Grows… why would they make 10 year olds read that!?!
i think the girl with the green ribbon was in In A Dark, Dark Room, and not Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, but i totally loved both of them
when i was dorming in college, once a week i’d read lurlene mcdaniel books and eat frozen pizza. crying profusely while eating isn’t a good look, FYI.
Lurlene McDaniel! Ughhh!!
MADE MY DAY.
I remember almost every one of these.
And yes–everything you say is too true…
I had totally forgotten about “Flowers in the Attic” – thanks, Ms. Marcus, for bringing that one up. Another one that really bothered me was “Izzy, Willy-Nilly.” Granted, I was never a cheerleader, but the fact that she lost her leg in a car crash at such a young age and her life was turned upside down really upset me long after I finished the book.
Oh thank god, I thought I was the only one who read “Don’t Die, My Love” at midnight under the covers while crying my eyes out.
omg! the spiders on the face story was my recurring nightmare all through childhood! i still get freaked out when if i find a spider in my bedroom or bathroom!
A Summer To Die…everytime I got a bloody nose after this one I was convinced I had cancer. And now that my sons get endless bloody noses I worry everytime that they have cancer!
The truth: I LOVE Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. so much so that I still read it once a year. I guess because getting my period happened really young for me (way before any of my friends) it made me feel less alone (and I know you wanted to know that disgusting detail of my life lol). I was haunted by Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind by Suzanne Fisher Staples. The title character is Pakastani nomad teen whose husband-to-be is essentially given to her older sister after the man her sister was arranged to marry is killed and she is then selected to be a second wife of a much older man. She runs away, only to have her father catch up with her and the book ends with her father beating her for disobedience while crying. Oh and the camel she runs off with dies too. Breaks its leg, which I assume means dying like it does for a horse. I was depressed for months after that.