Creepy kids books

In honor of Halloween, I thought I'd talk about a couple of books we have on Jack's bookshelf that I find a more than a little disturbing. It boggles my mind that these books are considered classic children's stories.

The first one is "The Runaway Bunny" by Margaret Wise Brown, the author of "Good Night Moon." I picked this up at a store when Jack was really little because I had a store credit to use up. I figured it must be ok since it was considered such a classic and the author is so well-regarded. I didn't end up reading it until several weeks after I brought it home.

The gist of this book is that a little bunny wants to run away from his mother. She tells him no matter how far he runs away, she will always find him. If he turns into a fish, a rock, a boat, etc., she'll turn into a fisherman, mountain climber, the wind, etc. (respectively) to find him. Finally, at the end of the book, the little bunny gives up and says he may as well stay, since his mom's going to find him anyway. I guess the moral of the story is "stalking works" or "wear your victim down into submission." As troubling as this one is, it is nowhere near as bad as the next one.

The second book is "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch. I'd been hearing about this book ever since I had Jack and figured I'd finally check it out. Thank goodness, I just picked it from the library, so I didn't actually spend any money on it. It starts off with a mother who sings this song to her baby boy:

"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
My baby you'll be."

That part's all fine. Then the baby grows up to be a two-year-old. In the day time, he is extraordinarily naughty, and the mom is frustrated and exasperated with him. But at night, she sneaks into his room - and by "sneaks," I mean crawls on all fours - to stare at him while he's sleeping. And "if he's really asleep," she picks him up and rocks him and sings the above song.

Okay. He's two. I can see that. But then the kid grows up to be nine and then a teenager, and she's still crawling into his room at night and lifting him up out of his bed to sing him the song. It's starting to get a little weird, but it's a story, I'll suspend disbelief. But then, the kid grows up and moves across town into his own house. At night, the mom gets into her car with a ladder strapped to the top of it and climbs into this man's window so that she can pick him up and sing this song to him.

On the next page, the mom calls up her son and tells him to come to see her because she is "very old and sick." She tries to sing the song to him, but she can't finish. So he ends up picking her up and singing it to her, changing the last line to "My Mommy you'll be." Then he goes home, goes into his baby daughter's room, and sings her the song. And thus the cycle of obsessive, smothering parenting begins again.

Who exactly is this book written for?? I can't imagine reading it to a young child, especially when it ends with the mom basically dying. And even in the "cute" parts of it, the boy is so ill-behaved, I wouldn't want Jack getting any ideas. The famous cover shows the child as a toddler having made a terrible mess of the bathroom, with toilet paper strewn all over the place, toothpaste squirted out of the tube, and soap coming out of the bottle. Even Jack in his worst moments never did that.

I understand that both books are supposed to show a mother's unconditional love, but to me it crosses the line into creepy obsessive stalker territory. It amazes me that more people don't see it that way, but the Amazon customer reviews of both books show that most people don't. For me, "Guess How Much I Love You," "No Matter What," and even "Mama, Do You Love Me?" are much better examples of books illustrating a parent's unconditional love for his/her child.