Little red riding hood - wolf eats your grandma.
Hansel and Gretel - forced out by stepmother, forced to kill a witch to survive.
Three little pigs - wolf kills your brother's.
Struwwelpeter. We had an English copy handed down by my grandfather. It's insane.
Example: "Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug ("The Very Sad Tale with the Matches"): A girl plays with matches, accidentally ignites herself and burns to death. Only her cats mourn her."
("The Story of the Wild Huntsman") is the only story not primarily focused on children. In it, a hare steals a hunter's musket and eyeglasses and begins to hunt the hunter. In the ensuing chaos, the hare's child is burned by hot coffee and the hunter jumps into a well.
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark sure the fuck isn't a cuddly-looking bait-and-switch, but it is plainly aimed at a younger audience. Basically a collection of standard campfire stories and spooky e-mail forwards... with nightmare-fuel watercolor illustrations.
Yup, story goes that the publisher thought it was too scary for children, so Neil Gaiman, the author, told the publisher to read it to her daughter. The daughter said it wasn't scary, and so it was published as a children's book. Years later, the daughter said that she was actually scared but lied about it because she wanted to know the ending
A series of unfortunate events was pretty bad for me.
My grandpa kept buying them, and i read them because I didn't know how to not reqd a book given to me, but they definitely taught me how to say no to a gift.
Man, I loved that series growing up. ...I... Probably have some issues; and a positively arcane internal dictionary. Also, a photographic recollection of what dramatic irony is.
I don't remember which book it was in, but the story about the person calling every single hour only to find out he was in the house the whole time scared me back in the day so much I absolutely dreaded going back to my room in the basement at night. Especially since my room was the furthest from the stairs.