: Re: Mortal danger in mid-grade literature In a comment to my post here, Cyn mentions wishing to avoid implying that the characters might all die, because she's writing for a mid-grade audience. Which

@Kaufman555

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I recall reading Animorphs as a kid, which featured kids describing in detail such gruesome things as losing limbs, bashing bad guys over the head with said severed limbs, and being completely bisected (all in one book no less... the bisection was actually the cause of the major conflict of the book) and in first person detail.

Now, it helps that he central problem of the series was that the kids were able to change into biological clones of individual animals, and a lot of the maiming happens while they are morphed in animals... leaving the morph regrows the lost appendages... the bisection occurred while the character was a starfish and was able to regenerate into two starfish... both morphing back for a unique clone of the same person... but they still felt pain from the injuries and were very traumatized by the series end.

But even then, some books were way more gruesome than this. The main bad guy in the series was am alien race of brain slugs, and when the hero comes in contact with two of the aliens the slugs have escaped that claim they escaped the brain slugs and are free of their control. Our hero is suspicious of a possible trap that they are still under control of the slugs... until one of the pair takes his claws and opens his own skull to show that there is definitely no brain slug... and the hero never brings up the possibility again.

The series was a huge hit among late elementary school (I recall reading books in the 4th grade) and was the best selling book for boys in that age range until Harry Potter came out (My Fifth grade teacher introduced me to that, but I recall reading it before it was published in the U.S. My copy was still the Philosopher's Stone.). As early as book two, another character is propositioned by two older men (she's about 13 at the time.). While they never said anything overt, it's clear to an adult reader that it's pedophiles trying to kidnap a teenager.

You'd be surprised what children of that age can cope with in terms of violence... Adult me was shocked with the amount of carnage kid me read from those books.

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