Children are in the process of learning about life and the world around them. One particularly challenging topic for children is the idea of death - why is it that pets and grandparents (and sometimes, tragically, siblings and parents as well) cease to live? Children's literature has become a popular way of broaching this topic with children.
In the premodern era, folktales and legends frequently addressed issues of death and mortality, and were deemed suitable for young children, perhaps because of the high rates of child mortality throughout history. For example, the Grimm fairytales include numerous stories in which the protagonist dies or kills someone else. In these stories, death is often associated with spirituality, especially Christian ideas about the afterlife (Corr, p. 380). In keeping with this religious doctrine, death is often represented as the entrance into heaven for good believers.
In the modern era, children's literature often presents death in an age-appropriate and nuanced fashion, making space for children to ask difficult questions about the end of life and about the proper way to mourn the passing of a loved one. According to some studies, almost one-third of deaths depicted in children's literature involve the tragic death of an animal companion (Seibert and Drolet, p. 87). Classic novels featuring the death of a major animal character include Black Stallion, Old Yeller, and Where the Red Fern Grows. These novels present the deaths of these animals as tragic, yet ultimately as experiences that help the (human) main character to grow.
An analysis of the literature demonstrated that "life after death" is only the subject of 31% of the books written for 3- to 8-year-olds that included death between 1970 and 1989 (Seibert and Drolet, p. 88). This may be reflective of the diversity of religious and spiritual belief that has emerged in the modern era.
Children's literature involving the death of characters most often presents the deaths of adults. Of the deaths in books for children ages 3 to 8 written in the 1970s and 1980s, 51% were adults and only 9% involved children. The rest of the deaths involved an animal, as stated above (Seibert and Drolet, p. 88). This suggests that writers prefer to introduce children to the concept of death by describing the deaths of someone who is very different from them, such as an animal or an adult.
In writing Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt asks a parallel question: what if there were some people who lived forever, but it wasn't actually that great? The novel depicts a family who cannot die - they do not age and are not affected by injury or disease. However, they don't completely enjoy their immortality. They live lonely lives, having been driven out by their original community when it became clear that the aging process did not affect them. They keep their identities secret and move constantly to avoid detection. They have no friends, because they cannot take the risk of someone finding out about their secret and desiring the waters of the spring for themselves. Most of all, they must deal with the pain of being cut off from the natural cycles of life.
In the novel, death is presented not as a frightening end or a consequence, but simply as part of the natural cycle of life. When Winnie acknowledges the reality of death and accepts that she too will die, she takes the first steps on the road to adulthood. She ultimately chooses a normal life as a wife and mother over drinking the waters of the immortal spring, offering a role model for the young reader.
