Do Chukovsky's books teach kindness?!!

My child is currently at an age where he needs bedtime stories. And of course, the most read author is K.I. Chukovsky. But in my childhood, I never suspected that the fevered imagination of a children's writer was capable of inventing plots and turns of phrase that would make Stephen King gnash his teeth in same helplessness from envy. Take "The Stolen Sun," for example:
"Only bug-eyed crayfish
Crawl through the gloom upon the earth,"

This is some kind of thriller, honestly. Personally, I imagine absolutely nightmarish black shiny monsters three meters long, with eyes on wriggling stalks. They sneak up silently in the gloom (note—not in the dark, but specifically in the *gloom*) toward an unsuspecting victim, crunch, and the person is snapped in half!

"And in the ravine beyond the mountain
Mad wolves howl."

Yes, yes. Specifically *mad*. With insane red eyes, with white foam on bared fangs. Lunging at everything living with a nightmarish laugh...

"And in the swamp Mother Bear prowls,
Searching for her cubs under the driftwood:
"Where have you gone, where have you vanished?
Or did you fall into a ditch?
Or did mad dogs
Tear you apart in the gloom?"

Mad dogs, if anyone didn't get it—they are the best friends of the mad wolves. And they live in that same gloom where the nightmarish crustacean monsters crawl. But how can one suggest to their own child that they were torn apart by dogs? Or is she saying this with hope in her voice?

"Dr. Aybolit." The apotheosis of sadism and hatred for all living things. Even as a child, the following phrase caused me bewilderment:
"My little bunny, my boy
Got hit by a tram!
He was running along the path,
And it cut his legs off,"
What kind of tram can be on a path? And what now, should one not walk on paths, since at any moment a killer tram could jump out from around the corner and cut both legs off for nothing? At age five, I almost developed pathophobia... But the continuation is touching:
"And now he is sick and lame,
My little bunny!"

Further—it gets scarier:
"And Aybolit said: "No matter!
Bring him over here!
I'll sew new legs on for him,"

New legs, did you hear that? Meaning the old ones got lost somewhere, are lying on the tram tracks, scaring old ladies to death. And Aybolit just casually pulls other legs out of a freezer and sews them on. With heavy-duty thread. Without anesthesia. To a screaming bunny spurting blood from severed arteries. And whose legs are they, one might ask? Leftovers from other patients who were less lucky? How many corpses are on your conscience, doctor?
"He'll run along the path again."
Presumably, until the next little tram...

"What is it? Could it be
That your children have fallen ill?"
"Yes-yes-yes! They have angina,
Scarlet fever, cholera,
Diphtheria, appendicitis,
Malaria and bronchitis!"
It's a good thing that Korney Ivanovich has limited knowledge of medicine. Otherwise, he would have infected the poor children with such things that it would be easier to kill them out of mercy. Although these diseases are enough to die in 24 hours... Appendicitis alone is something else. Fail to remove it in time—peritonitis and game over!

"Barmaley." Just one quote:
"But the villain grabs Aybolit
And throws Aybolit into the bonfire.
And Aybolit burns and screams:
"Ow, it hurts! Ow, it hurts! Ow, it hurts!"

Dedicated to Joan of Arc and Giordano Bruno... The stench of burning hair, the crackle of popping skin, the hiss of boiling subcutaneous fat. Hands and feet usually burn down to the bone. Loss of consciousness from pain shock doesn't happen quickly enough. Usually, the person being burned suffocates in the smoke first...

Aybolit is the favorite character of Chukovsky's narratives. Here is the apocalyptic scene unfolding at his door:
"And there, at the threshold, the wretched crowd:
Blind ducklings and legless squirrels,
A thin little frog with a sick belly,
A spotted little cuckoo with a broken wing
And hares, bitten by wolves."
The blind ducklings were apparently brought by the legless squirrels... Hares, bitten by wolves: fragments of bones protruding from open fractures, partially scalped carcasses, intestines dragging through the grass, smeared in blood and feces...

This author has a poem that shouldn't have been written at all. Just leave the title. It is genius on its own: "Hedgehogs are Laughing" (He-he-he... Leave some for me...). Another title: "A Fly in the Bathhouse." Surely a typo. It should be: "Muhahaha in the Bathhouse"...

The poem "Glutton" tells us about the dangers of hard drugs:
"I had a sister,
She sat by the campfire
And caught a big sturgeon in the fire.
But the sturgeon was
Cunning
And dove back into the fire."
Of course, I've never pulled sturgeons out of fires, but I did see the Black Man in my apartment one night. Let me tell you, that's way scarier.

Now a short test. I don't know what Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky was guided by when choosing rhymes, but whenever I read one section of the poem "Telephone" aloud, for some reason my wife always laughs... And I struggle to read it correctly myself. Now you try to put the correct word in the blanks (better to read aloud):
"And recently two gazelles
Called and began to sing:
- Could it be
Is it really true
That all the carousels
Burned down?

- Oh, are you in your right mind, gazelles?
The carousels didn't burn,
And the swings survived!
You, gazelles, shouldn't __________,
But next week
Should have trotted over and sat
On the carousel-swings!"

And what did you get? I got the same thing...

"The Giant Cockroach"... A tale of insectoid domination, which served as the basis for the authors of the movie "Starship Troopers." And in the very first lines we meet—guess who? You won't guess.
"And behind them crayfish
On a lame dog."
I wonder if these are the same crayfish and dog that were accomplices of World Evil in "The Stolen Sun," crawling in the gloom and tearing apart bear cubs?

"The wolves, out of fear,
Ate each other."
In my childhood, I remember agonizingly trying to imagine this scene. I even remember schematically drawing wolves eating each other to understand how such a thing is possible. It turned into something resembling an Ouroboros. And the action is completed: "Ate." Meaning nothing is left. Where did the eaten wolves go? Did some kind of micro-collapse of space occur and they snapped into another reality?
Well okay, let's leave that riddle to the physicists. But let the psychiatrists answer me—what rare disorder is this, eating the nearest person to you out of fear? After all,
"The poor crocodile
Swallowed a toad."
(Poor crocodile... yeah. And the toad is probably glowing with happiness, being digested alive in stomach acid...)
"And the elephant, trembling all over,
Sat right on a hedgehog."

Do you feel sorry for the elephant? I did. It must have been painful for her to sit on a hedgehog... And only now do I realize that you shouldn't feel sorry for the elephant at all... THE HEDGEHOG IS F***ED!!! He was flattened to hell!!! 6 tons of bone and meat onto an animal the size of a cat... There was nothing left to bury... No place for his wife and children to lay flowers... Everything that remained of the poor hedgehog stuck to the elephant's backside and was shaken off after ten steps. And you say... And what a stupid inscription will be on the gravestone—"Crushed by a trembling elephant ass"...
By the way, this same elephant in the poem caused another death. Just as absurd and tragic. And again for the reason that she was unable to control her own emotions:
"And the dandy-elephant
Dances so wildly,
That the rosy moon
Trembled in the sky
And tumbled head over heels
Onto a poor elephant."
One has to abstract from the fact that a moon falling to earth would destroy all living things for millions of years... Let it just be the elephant...

Returning to Aybolit. Remember, I had a suspicion that Aybolit runs an illegal organ bank. This suspicion only strengthens after reading "Toptygin and the Fox." We can even learn a bit about who served as a donor for the criminal doctor:

"Alright, alright, dear, I'm ready.
I have as many tails as you want.
There are goat ones, there are horse ones,
There are donkey ones, long-long ones.
I will help you, orphan:
I'll even tie on four tails..."

Mishka began to try on the tails,
Mishka began to walk in front of the mirror:
He applies a cat one, then a dog one
While glancing sideways at the Fox."

Draw your own conclusions...
Villains often appear in Chukovsky's poems. And what is the simplest way to defeat a negative character? A generation raised on Hollywood action movies shouts in unison: "Kill the bastard!!!" But long before Hollywood, K.I. Chukovsky preached this method of Good's victory over Evil. Moreover, with a lean toward cannibalism.
Recall: Barmaley was eaten by a crocodile. The crocodile, in turn, was broken by a bear. Old Man Spider was beheaded by a marauding mosquito. The cockroach was swallowed alive by a sparrow.
Do you still believe that Chukovsky's books teach kindness?

All of this is blatantly ripped off, but when I read Chukovsky to my child, it's not only these thoughts that come to mind...

P.S. Just how much do you have to practice to write the words "blanket" and "sheet," and then *not* rhyme them with "I'm f***ing fed up" and "bullsh*t"...