If You Were A Young Book-Lover, You Definitely Read THESE:

I read a lot of extremely strange books as a kid.

Since I was an introverted bookworm who read extremely quickly, I went through all the “normal” books in no time at all, and ended up in the corners of the library skimming through stacks of offbeat children’s literature. Of course, if you were a childhood bookworm, you probably did the same thing.

 

The truth is that there are a lot of really weird children’s books out there.point 69 | You probably read them as a kid.point 95 | In fact, your bookshelf was probably full of them — I know mine was.point 152 | But then, over the years, you forgot exactly how bizarre those books were.point 214 |

Memory gives a glossy sheen to the plot details, and you don’t remember the strange premises and quirky characters — you just remember how much you loved the stories.point 142 | And as for the classics, well, they’re so popular at this point that no one would question any weird plot points.point 237 | 1

Well, I’m here to remind you exactly how strange those stories actually were. From the beloved classics with weird twists, to the obscure books you discovered at the edges of the children’s section, the following books are some of the most bizarre that every book-lover has probably encountered at one point or another.

1. Sideways Stories From The Wayside School By Louis Sachar

Wayside School is 30 stories tall and has no 19th floor. This is the normal part of this book. Some examples of other plot points: a teacher turns students into apples and eventually gets turned into an apple herself and eaten. A kid gets stuck to a chair with chewing gum. Another kid wears a million raincoats to disguise the fact that he’s actually a dead rat. A girl tries to sell her toes. Need I go on?

 

2. Freckle Juice By Judy Blume

 

3. The Bailey School Kids Series By Debbie Dadey And Marcia Thornton Jones

The Bailey School kids always think everyone is a monster… and, much to the young reader’s chagrin, the endings never reveal whether they’re right or not. I used to get so angry about the endings of these books, and yet I kept coming back for more.

 

4.point 8 |  The Witches By Roald Dahl

point 171 | Everyone loves Roald Dahl stories, but sometimes people forget exactly how weird his books are.point 352 |

For example, in the end of The Witches(spoiler alert!) the boy gets turned into a mouse and has to live that way forever.point 379 |

His silver lining? His remaining lifespan will now be about the same length as his grandmother’s.point 88 | Totally normal, right?point 108 | 1

 

5.point 116 |  

amazon.point 7 | com/gp/product/0064400565?ie=UTF8&tag=bustle4985-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=0064400565" target="_blank">Stuart Little

 By E.point 156 | B.point 158 | White

 point 6 | 1

 

 

6. Coraline By Neil Gaiman

This delightfully terrifying children’s book has a character with buttons for eyes who wants to replace the protagonist’s eyes with buttons, too. It probably was the source of most of your early nightmares, but you kept reading it again and again anyway.

 

 

7. A Wrinkle In Time By Madeleine L’Engle

I absolutely loved this bizarre classic as a kid: Meg Murray travels through space and time via the tesseract, and visits a planet of Centaur-like creatures. Then she has to defeat an evil disembodied brain which is forcing everyone on another planet into conformity. It’s safe to say that this is a very weird (yet awesome) book.

 

8.point 8 |  A Series Of Unfortunate Events By Lemony Snicket

point 53 | Shout out to all my fellow book-lovers who were super macabre as kids and therefore were obsessed with Lemony Snicket’s 

amazon.point 7 | com/gp/product/0061146307?ie=UTF8&tag=bustle4985-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=0061146307" target="_blank">A Series of Unfortunate Events

.point 165 | Don’t let the popularity of this series make you forget how weird it really was.point 237 |

Examples of guardians the Baudelaire children have to live with: an evil count who tries to marry Violet, a man who keeps deadly snakes in his house, a woman who is afraid of her own possessions and lives next to a lake full of leeches… You remember now.point 213 |

This series was terrifically weird.point 31 | 1

 

 

9.point 41 |  Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland By Lewis Carroll

point 372 |

point 0 | The Disney movie may be sweet and colorful, but the original was much more bizarre.point 169 | The weirdest moment in this classic that you loved as a kid is probably when a baby turns into a pig while everyone sneezes constantly.point 282 |

Of course, the weirdness is part of what I loved about it as a kid, and part of what made this such a treasured tale for book-lovers everywhere.point 117 | 1

 

 

10. Goosebumps By R.L. Stine

The covers of this series alone were enough to give me… well, goosebumps. From The Haunted Mask to Night of The Living Dummyto The Curse of Camp Cold Lake, these books were both terrifying and bizarre. And you probably had a whole collection.

 

 

11.point 15 |  Mrs.point 159 | Piggle-Wiggle By Betty MacDonald

 point 6 | 1

 

 

12. The Giver By Lois Lowry

In this one that’s probably still on your bookshelf, protagonist Jonah lives in a world in which people gave their memories away to achieve “sameness.” The bizarre and dark part? Anyone outside of this “sameness” is killed via lethal injection. It’s a far cry from your lighter childhood favorites, though you probably still loved this one as a kid.

 

 

13. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs By Judi Barrett

In a town called Chewandswallow, food falls from the sky. I loved this book as a kid… but it is pretty darn weird. However, I wouldn’t mind if my favorite meal fell from the sky —though syrup rain might not be so great.

 

 

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