Anyway. I respect you have your values and you know your children. And it's for that reason that no one else is better suited to look out for them than you. If this means reading more kids books, then, you know what, that ain't such a bad deal. Kids' books are pretty awesome .
Another fantastic, respectful, and insightful post. Thank you. At my Barnes & Nobel, the MG section is isolated from the rest of the bookstore. Let's pretend that harsh content is filtered (and I agree, not 100% of it ever could be), in as much as it is moved somewhere else in bookstores or libraries, parents would have a perimeter their kids cannot go beyond. Sure, this is not the case at every bookstore or library. Can kids get these books with harsh content at other stores or school libraries? That depends on the locality.
I recall a scene from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that spooked me, as a kid. The child catcher freaked me out, but did not scare me. Some things from Sid & Marty Croft (TV shows) freaked me out as well, such as Sleestacks (lizard humanoids that hunted people, if memory serves me right). These characters cannot be filtered out, and I get that. Regardless, there is content, placed/dumped into MG, that could be filtered somehow (for customer convenience).