Death By Newbery Medal - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Dog Dies At The End

"The dog always dies. Go to the library and pick out a book with an award sticker and a dog on the cover. Trust me, that dog is going down."

— Wallace Wallace, No More Dead Dogs

"Of the 25 winners and runners-up chosen from 2000 to 2005, four of the books deal with death, six with the absence of one or both parents and four with such mental challenges as autism. Most of the rest deal with tough social issues.

— Valerie Strauss, Washington Post.

"The Newbery has probably done far more to turn kids off to reading than any other book award in children's publishing."

— John Beach, associate professor of literacy education at St John's University.

There's a Slice Of Life story about childhood (or adolescence) and coming of age. The main character has a best friend (can be animal, but usually is another child) or family member who is a source of joy or wisdom or understanding in his or her life. As a bonus — also, An Aesop — this friend is often frailer, more unworldly, or otherwise more 'special' than the main character. Physical and/or mental disabilities are common among human versions, while animals will be scruffy and/or temperamental.

The twist leading to this trope is that, at the end of the story, this Very Special best friend or loved one is abruptly killed off, usually in a clear-cut case of Diabolus Ex Machina (a favorite trick is to have the death happen entirely offscreen). Sometimes, someone had to Shoot The Dog. In another common variant, a pregnancy will result in a miscarriage or a stillbirth. Unless the mother was raped. Basically the more horribly poignant the tragedy the better.

All this is generally accompanied by lots of 'end of the innocence' angsting from the main character, along the lines of "That was the day my childhood ended..." Really, it's just the author's way of having a child character suddenly make the jump to adulthood via a single defining tragedy. Yeah, Growing Up Sucks.

The Newbery Medal

is a prestigious award given to novels written for middle schoolers. Bridge to Terabithia won a Newbery for its handling of the topics embodied by this trope. Thirteen years later, Shiloh may have actually won its medal because it didn't go for the easy win by killing off the dog at the end. Still, most books for "young readers" (and similar movies) deal with these issues in a fairly Anvilicious fashion, and are obviously bucking for critical acclaim or recognition by killing off a beloved character in a children's book. (Winners of the Caldecott Medal

, the comparable award given to illustrated books for younger children, are understandably far less likely to feature this trope.)

Here's the rub: It works.

This trope is so pervasive, some readers expect that the most lovable character won't get to see the end of a critically acclaimed work of fiction. Part of the reason it is so pervasive is that there's a large dose of Truth In Television to it. Dogs, depending on breed, have average lifespans around 8-15 years, meaning many children with pets will probably see one die before they hit puberty and most will lose a pet before they're in the mid-teens. For children of the developed world - the ones who read Newbery Award books - this may well be their first experience of losing a beloved member of their household. And in real-life, the experience of losing a pet can either be a major stepping stone to Coming Of Age, or a shock that does lasting emotional damage.

Be warned: merely reading the titles listed below could result in spoilage, although the medal on the cover comes close.

Remember, one reader's predictable, Narm-filled Oscar Bait-er can be another's Heartwarming-Crowned Childhood Classic that will always hold a special place on their bookshelf. Just keep in mind.

Compare Oscar Bait, which often employs the same principle. Probably a subset of True Art Is Angsty.

Note: one "r" in Newbery.

Examples

Newbery Winners and Honorable Mentions

William H. Armstrong's Sounder (Newbery Medal, 1970).
Joan Bauer's Hope Was Here (Newbery Honor, 2001). The protagonist's father figure is dying of leukemia throughout the book.
Marion Dane Bauer's On My Honor (a Newbery runner-up.) In this one, the friend dies doing something the protagonist had promised not to do, and thus gets inflicted on tweens whose teachers think it's an important lesson.
Elizabeth Coatsworth's The Cat Who Went To Heaven. Exactly What It Says On The Tin. (Newbery winner, 1931)
James Lincoln Collier's My Brother Sam Is Dead (Newbery Honor, 1975): Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising; for the final battle between good and evil, nobody really dies. But the only book in the series which won a Newbery Medal (1976) is the one where they literally Shoot The Dog, The Grey King.
In Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons (Newbery Medal, 1995), this trope is played twice. First time it's subverted because the girl's mother has been dead the whole time, she's just in denial about it. Played straight when her grandma dies though.
- Author Sharon Creech later put a spin on the dead dog version of this trope with Love That Dog, a book written as a series of poems by the main character for a school assignment. It's slowly revealed that he lost his dog a while back. Learning about poetry helps him express his sadness and also his memories of the good times, to the point that the titular poem that closes the book is upbeat.
In Esther Forbes' Johnny Tremain, 1944 Newbery Medal winner and another favorite middle-school reading assignment, Rab dies at the end.
The 1974 Newbery Medal winner The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox has its protagonist, already forced to perform music to exercise the human cargo of a slave ship, witness the crew tossing most all of the slaves overboard to avoid detection by authorities. While a young slave boy survives and escapes a life of slavery, and the protagonist finally makes it back home, he is so traumatized by what happened that he never enjoys music again. A colossal downer, and cynical to boot.
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman's 2009 Newbery Medal winner, is an interesting case. It does go the conventional route by killing off the werewolf character, but in spite of a climactic set-piece or two it focuses on the very long process of maturation, beginning with childhood. It's not death that changes the main character, with all but one of his loved ones consisting of a vampire and many ghosts, it's life.
Jean Craighead George's Julie Of The Wolves is a Newbery Medal winner (1973) that ends with the heroine turning her back on humanity, in part because it kills animals for sport.
Jane Langton's The Fledgling (Newbery Honor, 1981), in which the young girl (as shown on the cover) learns to fly with a Canada goose; he is shot.
Averted in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (Newbery Medal, 1963). Meg has her big Coming Of Age moment, but she succeeds in her mission, and no one dies.
- Played straight in Madeleine L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light (Newbery Honor, 1981). The protagonist's grandfather, who is in the final stages of leukemia, asks her to tell him when it is time for him to die. However, by the end of the book he recognizes that he should not have placed that burden on her, and lifts it, and she comes to an epiphany about life and death.
- Also played straight in Many Waters, a sequel to Wrinkle, where Enoch dies after a reconciliation with his son Noah.
In the Newbery Honor-winning book that got some people into reading, Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted, Ella's mom dies early in the book as a result of not doing what the fairy godmother told her to. But, hey, it's a take on Cinderella; the mom has to die.
Lois Lowry has written two Newbery winners, Number the Stars and The Giver. The former involves Nazis, but ends with the protagonist's Jewish friend surviving, as she is evacuated along with other Danish Jews. The latter is the grimmer book. It isn't someone close to the hero who dies, but his innocence regarding his society is so dead by the end.
Averted (amazingly) in Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Shiloh (Newbery Medal, 1992), which had all the elements mentioned in the trope's quote, yet somehow, the titular dog managed to live. Possibly because the book focused on moral difficulties more than it did "a boy and his dog".
Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins (Newbery Medal, 1961) kills off not only the heroine's little brother in the beginning of the novel but her friendly wolf companion toward the end. Given that these were her only companions on a deserted island, it's pretty harsh.
- To be fair Kirana does have more companions than that. She takes in the wolf's son, several birds, an otter, and a fox (which she ends up releasing because it couldn't be tamed) and also becomes friends with a woman who comes to the island briefly with some others to hunt. Also, considering that the sequel deals with the heroine's niece describing life under Spanish oppression (a fate which befell all of the other inhabitants from her island that left) and the fact that Kirana dies at the end of that book without even her freedom, Island of the Blue Dolphins actually looks pretty cheery in comparison.
Linda Sue Park's A Single Shard (Newbery Medal, 2002): "Wherever you are on your journey, Crane-Man, I hope you are walking on two good legs."
Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia (Newbery Medal, 1978). While killing a little girl out of the blue may seem way over the top for a children's novel, the book was written some time after a friend of the author's son was struck dead by lightning at the age of eight.
Figgs & Phantoms by Ellen Raskin, a Newbery Honor Award winner.
Missing May by Cynthia Rylant is a Newbery winner about a girl and her uncle dealing with grief after the death of her aunt/his wife.
Somewhat subverted in Jerry Spinelli's Wringer, a Newbery Honored novel about a boy who overcomes peer pressure by saving the life of a bird.
Exception: William Steig's Abel's Island, about an Edwardian mouse who gets briefly stranded on an island contains a slightly Broken Aesop about self-reliance and the titular dandy matures by the end. It won a 1977 Newbery Honor. Nobody dies.
Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is another Newbery Award winner (1977) with a character pronounced dead in the final chapter.
Cynthia Voigt's Dicey's Song (Newbery Medal, 1983).
E.B. White's Charlotte's Web: Admittedly, it is a pig, not a child, who suffers the loss, but the theme of death and emotional maturity is still present. (Newbery Honor, 1953)
Subverted by Newbery Honor book On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder, which has the sticker and the dog on the cover. Jack survives to the end. He bites it pretty early in the sequel, though, and it's an explicit metaphor for Laura having to grow up and take care of herself and her sisters now.
Lloyd Alexander's The High King (Newbery Medal, 1969), final book of the Prydain Chronicles, takes this trope Up To Eleven. While the series hadn't exactly shied away from death before, the fifth book kills off ~~Prince~~ King Rhun, Annlaw Clay-Shaper, the High King Math, Loino, Coll, and Achren, depicts veritable carnage in what's ostensibly a children's book, and then throws in a rape threat for good measure. The previous book, Taran Wanderer, had been the series' Coming Of Age story, and had it's own angsty death. Alas, no Newbery for that one.
- Don't forget how the fifth book ends with Taran nobly staying to be High King of Prydain - which means giving up the gift of traveling to a far off land where no one dies or grows old and forever losing Dalban, Gurgi, Flewder, Prince Gwydian, Glew, and Doli (while they're technically not dead, they're still gone forever). He nearly gives up Eilonwy too, until she figures out an escape clause to stay with him.
Averted with the 1964 Newbery winner, It's Like This, Cat. The cat on the cover doesn't die. However, he does get almost killed fighting. Then he gets neutered. Also, a kitten dies.

Film

Many of the animated movies made by Disney
Marley And Me. And how. Within a week or so of the movie's release on DVD, it seemed that all of my customers at Blockbuster knew the ending. And if they didn't, they certainly got the point when I told them (upon being asked) that I'd heard it was a sad movie.
- Well, it's not as if the dog was killed off prematurely through some accident or tragedy. He just died of natural causes due to being old.
My Girl
The Yearling.
The French-Canadian film La Guerre des Tuques (of the Tales For All series) took its English title, The Dog who Stopped the War from the ending of the movie. Of course the dog ends the (snowballs) war by dying. Poor girl has a snow fort collapse on her. No Newbery (obviously), but several awards and nominations anyway, and an acclaimed and beloved classic to this day in Quebec.
Little Heroes. Never heard of it? Well, you're lucky. Not only does the dog die but it dies in a random way when he eats poisoned bait meant to kill a fox that is a nuisance to the local chicken farmers.
- Dogs Are Dumb.
Ken Loach's Kes

Other Literature

Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has three deaths: Junior's grandmother's, a family friend's, and his sister's. Junior says, though, that he's been to forty-two funerals in fourteen years, so three in the space of a school year isn't unusual.
- Alexie based the book largely on his life, and during the particular year of high school the book is modeled after, he actually went to eight funerals. He cut it down for the book because he felt that so many funerals "would have turned into some marathon-of-pain book that no one would have wanted to read."
Bel Ria by Sheila Burnford, better known as the author of Incredible Journey, which was made and remade into films. The dog doesn't die. All its masters do, though.
In a straight example, the forest boy Tacit would mourn the death of his fiery-haired, lame-of-leg friend in the last chapter. But this is a subverted example, for that friend is Peter David's Sir Apropos Of Nothing, and he would eventually steal Tacit's destiny out from under him.
Parodied (brutally) in Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog (Nebula Award for Best Novella, 1969). The titular boy escapes with his new girlfriend to find that, in his absence, his telepathic, erudite dog has been beaten nearly to death. His girlfriend, who's kind of a jerk, makes clear that he can either save the dog, or save her. Cut to the next scene, with the dog's injuries wrapped in the girl's dress, both of them complaining about how full they are, and... something... roasting over the remains of their fire.
William Gipson's Old Yeller — but not its sequel Savage Sam, which far fewer people have probably heard of, let alone read. Although it was also filmed by Disney.
John Green's Michael L. Printz Award winning book Looking for Alaska features an nerdy young teen who goes to a boarding school and meets a beautiful, adventurous girl with green eyes named Alaska. She has issues about her dead mother, so she drinks and smokes a lot and drives a beat up old car with bad brakes. Need I say what happens to her midway through the novel?
A Girl Called Al and Beat the Turtle Drum, both by Constance C. Greene.
Out Of The Dust, by Karen Hesse, because accidentally setting your pregnant mother on fire is just not bad enough.
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving has this one in spades. The main character's special friend is not only physically handicapped, but is a brilliant person who goes around giving life lessons as if it were his job When your parents make you think you were immaculately conceived, it helps. But everything works out for him in the end right? No, it doesn't, as he gets killed in pretty much the same way as he's been dreaming it through the entire book.
- It could be argued that A Prayer for Owen Meany is a deconstruction of this, as rather than Coming Of Age as a result of Owen's death, the narrator is so traumatized that he basically remains an emotionally stunted manchild for the rest of his life.
Not a Newbery winner, but the sixth Redwall novel Martin the Warrior happens to be one of the most highly regarded of the series and one of the few to feature a true Downer Ending, in which the titular mouse is driven into self-imposed exile by his grief and guilt over the death of his girlfriend in the final battle.
Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones has a variant. The protagonist is the guardian spirit of the star Sirius, reincarnated as a dog. The book ends with him abandoning his dog body and returning to his star. His mistress clearly considers the dog-version of him to have died, and the spirit to be a different entity.
John Knowles' A Separate Peace
Spoofed in No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman, which starts out with the main character writing a book report about "Old Shep, My Pal", a fictional medal-winning book. He notes he knew Old Shep was going to die when he saw the award sticker, and then name-checks Old Yeller, Sounder, Bristle Face, and Where The Red Fern Grows.
Inverted in Jack London's The Call of the Wild: The dog is the protagonist, undergoing a transformation through hardship (and sometimes abuse) from dutiful pet to wild wolf, and when a Diabolus Ex Machina abruptly kills his loving human master (off-screen), it allows him to make the final jump to fully wild. Not primarily for children.
Carolyn Meyer's Elliot and Win has as its climax a (extra-disturbing since the actual act is all that's offscreened) fairly brutal rape of the main character's best friend, who heretofore was a spunky, active, well-developed character.
Ginga Tetsudou no Yoru ("Night on the Galactic Railroad") - a novel by Kenji Miyazawa, made into an anime film - although the death doesn't occur at the end of the story, only the reveal of it.
The pig named Pinky dies in the climax of Robert Newton Peck's A Day No Pigs Would Die. Not an official Newbery Winner either, but the themes present in the other examples are most definitely there.
- Don't forget the dad dies, too, and a dog. I believe all the remaining livestock dies in the sequel, A Part of the Sky.
Rodman Philbrick's Freak The Mighty is this.
Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows gives us two dogs, both of which are dead by the end of the book. The horrible wounds of the dogs (and the death of the bully who disembowels himself on his own hatchet) are described in graphic detail. (Classic middle school reading assignment, but not a Newbery Award winner)
How I Live Now and Just In Case by Meg Rosoff. These books are so not about the dog and so full of tragedy and loss that you may not realize on first reading that one of the hopeful, redeeming elements is that the dog does survive. Even if it may be imaginary.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows included one death that JK Rowling has acknowledged as being for this purpose, that of Hedwig. Readers might see other examples in the preceding three books, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (check Cedric's noble, mournful look on some versions of the cover, and certainly the movie poster), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (being Harry's father figure and friend rolled together makes Sirius a prime Growing Up Sucks death), and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (Dumbledore finally gets a cover! Oh.).
- I suppose Sirius's ability to turn into a dog means his eventual death should have been obvious from the start.
  - Likewise Dumbledore's Mentor Occupational Hazard.
  - JK Rowling probably knows better than to try and slip award bait into her HP series. Deaths in her books seem to be either simple drama, or plot mandated deaths to make Harry's role more important.
Most of the latter half of Felix Salten's Bambi, starting when Bambi loses his mother, is one long series of Deaths By Newbery Medal. Particularly Gobo, the deer raised by Man. He doesn't distinguish between He who raised him and He who is out for a hunt and dies horribly for it.
- Heck, Felix Salten loved this trope. If you're ever lucky to get your hands on one of his rarer books like Perri or Fifteen Rabbits you can see how many times he does this.
Viciously and repeatedly mocked in Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians.
Anthony Simmons' novel The Optimists of Nine Elms (adapted into a film starring Peter Sellers) is an interesting variation. The old busker Sam's dog, Bella, indeed dies, but it's not a shock to the kids who befriend them or the reader. Sam knows and accepts this will happen sooner or later. The climax of the novel is not Bella's death, but the children managing to bury her in Hyde Park's little dog cemetery to fulfil Sam's wish that she be laid to rest there.The kids accomplishing Bella's burial—and leaving their own dog with Sam—is actually a bittersweet triumph for idealism.
Doris Buchanan Smith's A Taste of Blackberries.
Subversion: Swedish children's book En stjärna vid namn Ajax (A Star Called Ajax) by Ulf Stark (illustrated by Stina Wirsén) has the dog Ajax dying and his boy Johan travel to the stars to get him back. He succeeds. (Not a Newbery winner, obviously.)
Pretty much anything John Steinbeck ever wrote fits this trope. The man lived to torture his protagonists.
- Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (and its several adaptations) famously features this trope, George shoots Lenny, though not a Newbery winner (having received the much higher recognition of being banned repeatedly.)
  - This trope really seems more about cases where the death of a particular character is more important for it's effect on other characters than for itself- In the context, the focus of Lenny's death seems to be more of an examination of responsibility and love, as well as intolerance, than as a simple event in George's life- the fact that George's pain is the note on which the story ends, instead of his overcoming said pain, runs counter to most of the other examples on this page where the recovery of the survivor is as important as the event.
- The Red Pony. Not a Newbery award winner, but another commonly assigned middle school reader, this collection of short stories features a tale about a boy, his horse, and how that horse died horribly and is eaten by vultures. In about the second chapter. Books should not be named after characters who don't make it to the halfway point'
Catherine Storr's Marianne Dreams and its film adaptation Paperhouse, in which the main character never meets the best friend who dies thanks to the action taking place in Dream Land.
Theodore Taylor's The Cay features a Magical Negro who cares for a racist boy while they live stranded on a tropical island, then dies in a hurricane. The book has become a classic and received a number of awards, though not an actual Newbery.
Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole, pretty much a perpetual adolescent, finally grows up (at the age of 35!) when his son's army buddy is killed in action in Basra.
Bill Wallace's A Dog Named Kitty. The dog actually survives being mauled by wolves and makes a full recovery, only to be crushed under a falling truckload of drill pipe.
James Hurst's short story "The Scarlet Ibis", but with a physically disabled little brother.
Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles. Slice-of-life story? Check. Dog featured on cover? Check. Award winner (not Newbery, but you get the picture)? Check. Does the dog get killed off? Oh yeah. Does the main character turn angsty and Jerk Assy over the dog's death? Surprisingly, no - that happened earlier in the novel, but it continued for a while after the dog died. Three out of four isn't bad, though (and neither is the book, really).
Alan and Naomi by Myron Levoy didn't win the Newbery, but it was clearly bucking for one. It tells the story of a young Jewish boy in New York who befriends a WWII refugee who is badly mentally scarred after witnessing her father being beaten to death by Nazis. Slowly, over the course of numerous chapters Alan helps Naomi come out of her shell, just to get in a fight with a bully at the end, scaring Naomi so badly she retreats back into her fugue state, apparently for good. Not a death per se, but definitely in the ballpark of this trope.
Goodnight Mr Tom won half a dozen awards; the protagonist's baby sister dies of starvation in his arms, and his best friend is killed in an air raid.
Betsy Byers's Cracker Jackson, about a young boy nicknamed by his loving babysitter, seems to be a lighthearted novel about a boy living in the seventies with good friends and good family. Really? Nope. Turns out it's about spousal abuse and describes how a woman was beaten with a wrench. And it was on this troper's sixth grade reading list!
- This troper read that book and absolutely loathed it. Though the part where Jackson steals his mom's car is hysterical.
Stone Fox, a critically acclaimed children's book about a boy and his dog entering a sled race to save his ailing grandfather's farm. The dog dies at the end.

Live Action TV

Animal Miracles, with Alan Thicke, pulled one over on the viewers with a commercial break making us wonder how Caesar the police officer dog will take down the crazy man near the elementary school. He didn't. Crazy man kills Caesar and officers take him down. Miracle indeed.
Vincent lives.

Videogames

Fable 2 starts with you and your sister as street urchins in the city of Bowerstone, wondering how the two of you will make it through the winter. Excited by the prospect of a wish to live in the castle, the two of you scrape together five gold coins to buy a magical music box from a traveling merchant. The wish comes true and the two of you are personally invited to the castle. And just when you and your sister's dream of living happily ever after is within grasp, it is swiftly cut short when the Lord kills your sister and sends you plummeting out the window in order to safeguard his ambition. Oh, and later in the game your dog, does indeed, go down.
- You have the option of turning this into a subversion, however, by choosing the "Love" ending, which brings back everyone you care about that Lucien murdered... but no one else.
  - Also, in the DLC You can resurrect your fallen dog, but not your family, with a human sacrifice.
In Final Fantasy Tactics, Delita's little sister Teta is killed very early in the game, causing both Delita and Ramza to abandon the nobility.
- Aeris.
Just by looking at the trailer for Team ICO's upcoming PS 3 game The Last Guardian, many players have already predicted that by the end of the game, either the little boy or the colossal cat/rat/bird creature featured prominently in the trailer is going to die. Though technically, that's just par for the course with Team ICO's games.
- Well, if you tally it up, Agro survived her fall, Wander was arguably reincarnated as an infant, Mono returned to life as promised, and Ico and Yorda both safely escaped the castle (unless you're one of the tinfoil hats who believes the beach was the afterlife). So, technically, no sympathetic character has ever died in a Team ICO game, each game just kept tugging at the player's heartstrings just enough.
After watching the latest trailer for Final Fantasy XIII, is there any doubt left that Serah is going to die?