I remember one of my college roommates often harping on how the opening of Babar had traumatized her for life. So you never know. (Mostly I was traumatized when I gave it to my friend S and in reading it to her son realized how bad the standard translation was.)

Our elementary librarian decided that reading WtRFG was not enough and so showed the movie to each class. TRAUMATIZED.

Ha, I had to google WtRG. I was like, "Walter the Red Farting Dog? No..."

I am still not over reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry in 5th grade.

Bridge to Terabethia was pretty traumatic.

I'd never even heard of Bridge to Terabethia the book, so when I saw the movie (in my late 30s!), I was traumatized. And then stunned that it was a YA book.

Bridge to Terabithia and A Taste of Blackberries both stunned me as a kid. "What do you mean Leslie's/Jamie's dead? Like DEAD dead? No way!" I'm not sure if they were accomplishing what they were supposed to - introducing the concept of death and how to deal, or if they just helped to set me on my current path of avoiding stuff with sad endings like my life depended on it. (Never read Where the Red Fern Grows, Sounder, The Yearling, etc. - forewarned was/is forearmed, yo).

"Where The Red Fern Grows" was THE most upsetting book I read before age 12, and I was reading all KINDS of crazy stuff with sex, violence, death and monsters.

OMG, NO KIDDING.

BUCKETS. BUCKETS OF WEEPING TEARS.

Our grade 3 teacher read it aloud to the class. The class pretty much excused themselves en masse to go weep uncontrollably in the bathroom.

Was My Friend Flicka traumatic? I seem to remember something upsetting. I never read Red Fern or Tarabathia or the others. We got oodles of Beverly Cleary books.

I'm not sure I'd count it as traumatizing, but in grade school I checked out a record from the public library of Basil Rathbone reading stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe. One was the Tell-Tale Heart in it's entirety (there was also an abridged Fall of the House of Usher - the rest were poems, I believe, but BR reading The Bells was impressive). That definitely made an impression, which I followed up by reading a lot more Poe. Nothing quite matches the first time I read The Black Cat. That one disturbed the hell out of me - even more than Tell-Tale or The Cask...

I was reading Stephen King not long after that, partly because there was a family-friend connection and also because I was a horror fan. Nothing much squicks me reading-wise after all that, I must say. The Shining scared the shit out of me but i still consider it one my favorite novels, which is probably why I have resisted reading Dr. Sleep up to this point. Don't want to taint something I have fond memories of.

I haven't recovered from "The Little Matchgirl" yet.