It's always nice to be shocked and outraged

[martinemonster]

I was reading old newspapers, looking for Norwegian views on American aid after 2WW when I stumbled upon this title: "Sadism for children". Not being one to focus too much on what I'm actually supposed to be doing, I didn't even try to resist the urge to read this little snippet, thinking anything with sadism and children in it had to be awesome. And it was. Turns out children's books of the 1950s are very different than ours. A "poor naive father" had bought a book for his sick child and was shocked and dismayed by the horrible tales in it. "Oh, well," I thought. "This is the 1950s, it can't be that bad." Then he added a quote. A rabbit who got it's head torn off in a trap jumps after a little boy, chasing him down, pins him down and yells: "you made me lose my head, now I'm gonna tear off your skin." The rabbit then promptly does this, and it's all described in great detail. Now I don't know what kind of children's books you read, but I can assure you that mine did not include giant, headless rabbits tearing people's skins off while they're trying to get away...