Children today demand iPods and cell phones at eight years old (call it the cult of the child). Contrast this with the gruesome, 19th-century child-rearing fables on display in the nursery-rhyme picture book Der Struwwelpeter . In this infamous classic, the methods are nightmarish, mean, and, sometimes, devastatingly final. Thumbs are severed from the little children who suck them, while other tots are burned to ashes for playing with matches. The specter of death may loom large in many children's books, but it rarely rears its head. In these grisly tales, however, the lesson seems to be love 'em to death — literally.

It's "something Hitler could have written on mescaline," according to Bob Staake, who has illustrated a new edition for Fantagraphics. Staake says he was drawn to Struwwelpeter because he couldn't believe it wasn't a joke of some sort: "but I soon learned this was the German way of child-rearing; scare the crap out of your kids and let 'em know that if they don't eat all their peas, some weird-looking clown will burst out from behind a curtain and slice their nose off with an ax."

Heinrich Hoffmann (1809-1894) was a German physician and director of a state mental hospital. He wrote Der Struwwelpeter as a Christmas gift for his son, Carl, in 1845. Hoffman had complained that he could only find "long tales, stupid stories, beginning and ending with admonitions like 'the good child must be truthful' or 'children must keep clean,' etc." His hair-raising alternatives sold briskly and the manuscript was translated into more than 30 languages (including a rather loose English translation by Mark Twain).

Hoffmann's drawings (of, say, fat Augustus starving to death) often contain more humor and pathos than his blood-thirsty rhymes. None other than Maurice Sendak once commented, "Graphically, it is one of the most beautiful books in the world." Staake's new drawings, though modern and vibrant, rely primarily on geometric shapes reminiscent of early computer animation — as if these suffering children and gun-toting rabbits were created on a single layer in Photoshop. While the cover image is reminiscent of the gross-out Garbage Pail Kids, Staake's interior spreads are sleeker and stylized — more akin to Soviet propaganda posters. Aside from its influential design, the book's longevity is due to its blend of good intentions and nasty outcomes — a heady mix that makes it an enduring epitome of questionable taste.

-Chris Gage