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What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: Difference between revisions
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* Lemony Snicket's ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]''. A story about a man who murders just about every character in the series trying to kill three orphans to get their inheritance. This includes characters being eaten alive, death by harpoon gun, and the untold unmentionables who didn't escape the hospital fire.
* Fairy tales, and pre-20th century bed-time stories. Maybe some of them were designed to [[Scare'Em Straight]], but still, some push it [[Up to Eleven]], with both psychological and [[Body Horror]] many snuff films don't get even close to. An example for the psychological horror story: a tale by [[Hans Christian Andersen|Andersen]] consists of nothing else than a lengthy description of the hypothermia-induced delirium a little girl suffers while she slowly freezes to death. About tales with [[Body Horror]]... too many to list. Fairy Tales were written for peasant children who grew up in rather a [[Crapsack World]]. What would be considered fit for them would be different then what is considered fit for modern suburban kids. Although it might be argued that even these generally have a stronger stomach then many adults realize. Some of them were originally written for adults. In these cases, it's [[What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?]]. Indeed, a lot of what we now consider to be for kids (''Little Red Riding Hood'', for example) were originally tavern stories adults told each other. They weren't told to children until ''much'' later.
* ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]''. Some adult fans realize that ''Harry Potter'' is a children's book, and like it anyway, but there are a lot of fans who will consistently deny that it is anything less than the highest, most mature form of literature, and that it is most definitely ''not'' for kids. They are children's books. That doesn't mean that teens and adults can't enjoy them, certainly, but to insist otherwise is hopelessly inane. The ''Harry Potter'' example is so prevalent that some editions of the books have plain covers in [[Real Is Brown|dingy earth-tones]] (as opposed to the colorful fantasy illustrations that the "main" editions have) so that adult readers don't have to feel so embarrassed when they read it on the train. The idea that they're adult books is less ridiculous when you realize that [[Word of God|Rowling herself]] has [[Flip-Flop of God|flip-flopped]] on this, first denying that they were anything but children's lit and then later claiming that she designed the books to "grow" with the audience, with the later books intended for a more mature audience than the earlier ones. See its entry on [[Audience Shift]]. About the time that third book came out, Rowling, when asked by Rosie O'Donnell if she was surprised at the books' success with adults, said that she originally wrote the books for herself and that she's obviously an adult, so the answer was no. Considering most children's books are written by adults, you think adults wouldn't feel they needed to justify reading a children's book in the first place... After all, if the author isn't embarrassed at having written, why should an adult feel embarrassed at reading it? One of the best example of this [[Trope]] is
* ''[[The Saga of Darren Shan]]'' is a kid's book series, but the author himself says that he knows people both above and below the series' age demographics read them. And he [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|gets a LOT past the radar]]:
** Book two mentions marijuana (or some other herbal drug; it's not mentioned by name) and 'shrooms.
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