Okay, tomorrow I plan on scouring the local book store for "Children's" Books as inspiration material but I'm not looking for your atypical material like BARNEY HUGS THE WORLD or Arthur. I'm looking for anything odd, surreal, subversive, deceptively cute yet contains multiple hidden messages, or just plain downright creepy. You know, things like Shel Silverstein, Peter Rabbit or Beatrix Potter in general, The Brother's Grimm (or any german or uncensored fairy tales in general), Dr. Seuss, Where The Wild Things Are, or those 12 SCARY STORIES FOR DISTURBED CHILDREN type books.

I'm really looking for picture books; nothing too text heavy so maybe a picture a page. I know you guys have to have some old books you read as a kid sitting around. Also, if anyone knows if there have been any recently released Choose Your Own Adventure books, I'd like to know, please. The internet contains a surprising limited amount of knowledge pertaining to picture books :(

I don't know many, but you should check out Tuesday. It's a very cool picture book with almost no words. (It's about frogs... but it's very surreal.)

Hanzel and Gretel (sp?) always freaked me out a little bit (the more uncensored version)...

that's just me, though.

If you don't mind me mentioning this here...I myself am looking for a specific children's book. Errr...I guess it was a children's book. It had some illustrations and I read it when I was very young.

It had a few different horror stories in it. One of them I remember specifically was where this man met this girl with a scarf or sash always around her neck. They went through their whole life together and he constantly asked her "tell me why you wear that" and she'd say something like "now is not the time".

Finally, when she's old and on her death bed, she lets him know why she wears the scarf by removing it....and her head falls off. XD I remember it really creeped me out when I was young.

I also remember there might've been a story about a witch in the book....not sure though.

I just thought I'd mention this somewhere in case someone recognizes the story and knows what the book was called...because I've been looking for it on the internet but can't find it. I doubt it though. =P

There's always Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (and its 2 sequels). There's more text than you're probably looking for, but the illustrations in those books... those were some nightmare-inducing drawings. Do a google image search for em.

The Stinky Chees Man And Other Stupid Tales Childs Book...

also Clive Barker's The Thief of Always very subversive and it was his attempt at a kids book.

Not real children's books: Oyster Boy and Everything Can Be Beaten

Real children's book: Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman and his great illustrator: Dave Mckean :)

angry_black_guy
The internet contains a surprising limited amount of knowledge pertaining to picture books

I agree. Its fustrating when I'm trying to re-discover all old children books I've read.

I think its also harder now to find some old version of books in bookstore nowdays... I remember one book where it was about brown slugs. How people use slugs as... blanket, or doorstopper, or in a bowl as soup, etc. It was pretty gross. I'm somewhat nauseated just thinking about it. Dont know how it passed as a children book.

You could also look for "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" by T.S. Eliot (look for the orange bookcover with 6 cats on the cover). It has some awesome weird illustrations that I really love.

Humm... I remember the old Alice in Wonderland book... 1898 edition version I think or near that time. You can try looking for that. Old block print or pen illustrations is awesome.

SarahN
Finally, when she's old and on her death bed, she lets him know why she wears the scarf by removing it....and her head falls off.

Oh! I remember that story, it creeped me out when I was a kid. lol! Theres other story in the same book about the girl in the raincoat (or big sweatshirt?). I do think they're from 'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark' mentioned by skoolmunkee, but I dunno for sure.

I found the story 'The Littlest Prince' very deep for a childerns book.

There's a book by a Russian author Georgiy Yudin, I'm not sure if it was even published in English but the title would be "The Green Piglet with a Button for a Nose". Despite the silly title, it's actually a really deep story. I read the thing for the first time when I was a kid, and only in my late teenage years did I actually understand what it was about. It has brilliant illustrations, too. If you want, I might scan some for you.

I picked up an adult version of Aesop's Fables with full color pages and stuff as well as the annotated Alice in Wonderland or something. The SarahN, the story you're looking for is called The Green Ribbon and it's in a book that has 7 or so horror stories in them which I also picked up for 2 bux. There's a lot of other new age religion stuff that has some great pictures in them so I'll be picking that up later and I collected all of Flight, a really awesome anthology comic that contains a lot of crazy experimental styles.

Overall, a good run.