The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
I remember being read this as a kid and loving it; I read it years later and realised that this is actually a very dark, disturbing, book which must surely have given me nightmares.
As most people know, Pinocchio is a living puppet who wants to become a real boy, and ends up being turned into a donkey; the Disney movie, while containing a lot of very scary moments, tones the book down a lot. When reading this again I noticed several moments that aren't entirely suitable for a kids' book:
*Gepetto cutting up a talking piece of wood.
*Pinocchio getting his feet burned off in the furnace.
*Pinocchio biting off the cat's paw.
*Pinocchio getting hanged by the fox and the cat.
*Several references to death, including a fairy who says all her family are dead, including her, and that she's waiting for the hearse to arrive; later, she brings in coffin bearers to take Pinocchio away when he refuses to take his medicine.
*Pinocchio almost getting cannibalised.
*Someone wanting turn turn Pinocchio's skin into a drum after he becomes a donkey; after all his donkey skin is eaten by the fishes, the same guy wants to turn Pinocchio into firewood.
In addition, although the Disney movie featured Jiminy Cricket by Pinocchio's side in almost every scene, in this version he appears only briefly, known as simply "The Talking Cricket" in chapter four. The chapter ends with Pinocchio killing him with a mallet, though he shows up again later as a ghost.
As an adult I still find the story entertaining, and understand the morals (though the implication that only boys want to skip school is very politically incorrect by today's standards), despite how shocking some of the content is. I wonder if Tim Burton will ever make a movie version that looks exactly like the original version?
Incidentally, none of this is anything as bad as the cartoon sequel (possibly made by Disney, I'm not sure), Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Dark, which starts off looking the same (except that Pinocchio is not a puppet), but keeps showing creepy carnival wagons, and ends up with Pinoccio, Jiminy Cricket and some other characters (possibly the fox and the cat?) getting captured by some sort of demon overlord - and I watched that when I was eight; not surprisingly, it terrified me.