school reading list

Is it just me or are they TRYING to make our children miserable?

Year 7 :
Then - Morris Gleizman (Nazis killing children)
Once - Morris Gleizman (Nazis killing children)
Anna Frank (actually I don't have an issue with this one)
Boy in Striped Pyjamas (Nazis gassing children)
Eli - Coming of age in the holocaust (child in a concentration camp)

Year 8 :
Days Like This (Alison Stewart) "I want to go back to the days when life made sense. The days before our parents became strange; before the warming ate away at all the living things in the world; before The Committee and their Blacktroopers. Before the Wall"

Lord of the Flies (kids being horrid to other kids)
War of the Worlds (invaded by aliens)
(actually both these are good books that I have read - but it's the recurring theme through all the texts which is just bloody miserable)
Age 14 - Geert Spillebeen - 14 year old soldier dies in the trenches
All Quiet on the Western Front
War Poems of Wilfred Owen

Is it just me that has issue with this reading list?