There are a few contemporary ABC books that engage with fear through disturbing elements in its illustrations, but Edward Gorey’s The Gashleycrumb
Tinies (1963) satirizes and plays upon a parent’s anxiety and paranoia about the possibility of their own child's death. Each child character in the story, whose name
begins with a letter of the alphabet, meets an untimely and gruesome end. For
example, when “T is for Titus who flew into bits,” the reader sees a young
boy opening a package at the door. Presumably, the package is a bomb that will
explode when the boy opens it. This is one of the more subdued examples in the
book, but it emphasizes a clear, satirizing moment in parenthood paranoia
because the possibility of receiving an exploding parcel, and an actual child
opening are close to zero.
But there are greater social fears Gorey speaks to in his
book. “K is for Kate who was struck by an axe,” suggests something more
disturbing to the parent, a child’s murder. “K” also underscores the “kill” in
this gruesome scene, where Kate’s body is clearly dragged through the white
snow from the woods. This cautionary tale hints at the original warnings found
in stories like “Little Red Riding Hood:” don’t go off into the woods alone to
talk to strangers or this might
happen to you. These examples are one of the reasons why Gorey’s audience for
his books has been notoriously hard to define. Some have argued that since his
books fall squarely in the nonsense genre (like the infamous Dr. Seuss), this
demarcation clearly places those works as children’s literature, although few
parents might agree. 
The elements of terror and fear found in darker cautionary
tales, intrinsically creates an obstacle for young readers. Neil Gaiman and
Gris Grimly’s The Dangerous Alphabet (2000)
use of the carnivalesque removes the hurdle between young reader and genre
through language play and accessible grotesque illustrations. The
Dangerous Alphabet takes place in an underground sewer waterway where two
young children engage with childhood anxieties caused by real and imaginary
monsters. Gaiman’s first half of the beginning rhyming couplet immediately
rejects the traditional verse in a classic ABC primer. “A” does not stand for
the obligatory “apple,” instead “A is for Always, that’s where we embark.” “Always”
or “all ways” suggests how readers must ignore commonplace beliefs found in
conventional, “safe” fictions for young readers, because this story intends to subvert those boundaries. 
Grimly’s illustration for the sewer waterways in the “A is
for” scene operates as a type of funhouse ride, more carnival than
carnivalesque in a sense, but the grotesque caricatures allow for an
exploration into the grisly underbelly of society from which children are often
shielded. The boy, wearing an apprehensive look, places the obligatory apple in
a cup as payment for “embark[ing]” on this misadventure. This act serves as a
visual cue and departure point for readers to liberate themselves from any
notion of the “safe” story.
The nature of the carnivalesque in The Dangerous Alphabet seeks to disrupt notions about the treatment
of children’s texts in dominant culture. This mode also serves as a form of
escapism for young readers from their parents, allowing them to traverse upon
the murky waters with the young girl and boy characters. By navigating through
their own fears and anxieties in tandem with the children characters, young readers find they will still come out safely from the funhouse ride without the
help of the authoritative parent figure.
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