Charlotte's Web

Geez, how violent can the first chapter be? It opens with the farmer taking an axe out to the barn to kill the runt pig in the new litter because it'll never amount to anything. I checked the inscription in the front of the book and saw that my mom gave it to me in 1973. I was 10 years old. Of course, this isn't the first time I read it but it had been awhile and I was just now reading it to my 4 year old. In chapter two, the pig, Wilbur, reached the age of 5 weeks old and the farmer told his daughter, Fern, who clearly loves Wilbur to pieces, that she has to sell it because he refuses to feed it anymore. Nice, huh? So, at the end of the chapter she sold her beloved pig to her Uncle for $6 and Wilbur is moved from his happy home under the blossoming apple tree and his cozy little house with the sweet fresh straw inside to the dank, dark, foul smelling basement of the uncle's barn where he now sleeps in a pile of shit. Lovely. My yes, but it's a heart warming story. You just have to wade through gloom and despair to get to the warm bits.
It's like reading Grimm's Household Tales, otherwise known as nightmare fodder, to her at bedtime. Yep, because you are small, you are worthless, of no consequence, and aren't worth wasting food on. Ouch.
And then there's Charlotte, the spider. Doesn't she die in the end? Maybe we should switch to Black Beauty. She likes horses. Oh, wait. The horse is nearly beaten to death on the street. Hmmm. The Velveteen Rabbit. Holy Smokes. Open a vein why don't you? Old Yeller. Riiiiight. Where the Red Fern Grows. That story still haunts me. Way too graphic. Chronicles of Narnia? Maybe.
Is four years old too soon for Nancy Drew? Not much gratuitous sex and violence in those.