The 10 Most Horribly Depressing Children's Books

Chased By An Elephant: The Mormon Church has made their stance on homosexuality pretty clear, so it should come as no surprise that Janice Barrett Graham, wife of Stephen Graham, President of the anti-gay organization, Standard of Liberty would pen a helpful, 100+ page book explaining proper sexual identity with some nice commentary on why you gals should not only resist your sapphic side, but also why feminism is ruining your empty little heads. Yes, it is a South Park episode come to unholy literary life, except that when South Park does something offensive and wrong it's on purpose. Oh, and Tarzan's involved for some damn reason.

Does God Love Michael's Two Daddies?: To save you the trouble of reading this book I will answer; Yes, God loves pretend gay marriages, but they're going to hell anyway. Probably Michael too because God is sort of an all or nothing fellow. If you want to make sure that your children grow up with the same vague homophobia that you blame on Jesus I can think of no better tome. Oh, and though they never come out and say it baldly, there are plenty of allusions to interracial marriages being as illegitimate in the eyes of God as same-sex ones.

On a completely unrelated side note... people who viewed this book on Amazon also viewed something called an Accoutrements Yodelling Pickle. Your guess is as good as mine, folks.

Vanna's Dance: Cambodia has the largest amputee population in the world. Know why? Because the country is rotten with land mines left over from the civil war in the 1970s. Sometimes little kids step on them, and what happens to their poor little bodies gets turned into a book by Maria Almudevar-van Santen. She's far from the only one, either. So if you're one of those people who say America is going to hell in a handbasket, just remember that your odds of stepping on a landmine tomorrow are very, very small, and try to keep some perspective.

Losing Uncle Tim: By the time I'd stumbled upon Losing Uncle Tim I'd been researching books that would explain death from a drawn-out painful illness for more than an hour because even a job where they pay you to watch Doctor Who has to have its downside. Mary Kate Jordan actually wrote a rather amazing story, and deals with the full range of emotions you go through as you say goodbye to someone who slowly dies. It doesn't make it any less heartbreaking, though.