Have you read some of the newer childrens books??
(There is a series I cant think of the name of - colourful covers...)
The passage I read scared the bejesus out of me!!
Somehow I don't think kids would be a problem... It'll be the kids parents and me that would be the problem....
But good luck for your setting! ![Grin ;D](https://ironcrown.co.uk/ICEforums/Smileys/default/grin.gif)
There are lots of things we teach children or used to teach them that if you stopped to think about them (and/or if you know meaning or origin), you would wonder. For example, the bedtime prayer:
Before I lay me down to sleep
Pray the Lord my soul to keep
And if I die before I wake
Pray the Lord my soul to take.
This is very old, it originated in a time when people died in ways we don't care to imagine, but when you stop to think about it, you wonder what the heck kind of thing is this to have a child say before going to sleep? Put the fear in them that in any night they might die before they wake again?
Or, try the children's nursery rhyme, Ring Around the Rosie.
Ring around the rosie,
Pocket full of posies
Ashes to Ashes,
We all fall down.
This one is very old. So old that few people think about what it means. It comes from the time of the Black Plague. Children still sing it today. Every one of us has heard it.
Or how about Mary, Mary Quite Contrary. I don't remember the words properly, but it's about Mary I, Queen of Scots ("Bloody Mary"), who usurped Queen Elizabeth I's rule and executed Protestants (and was herself executed by consent so that her son James I could become king). Not quite the subject for children, eh?
You don't need modern or new children's books to find things that scare the bejesus out of you.
As a side note, when I first discussed this idea with SamwiseSeven, it reminded me of a very strange movie, "City of Lost Children" that I have not watched in a long time. I'll have to dust it off.
![Wink ;)](https://ironcrown.co.uk/ICEforums/Smileys/default/wink.gif)