The Last Guardian is going to be great. Nobody's arguing that. But there's only two ways that game is going to end. The boy dies, or the baby gryphon dies.
— Penny Arcadespoiler
It's a film about a family that get a dog. Figure out for yourself what happens at the end.
— Mark Kermode on Marley & Me
The one thing I hate about animal stories is that after you've almost read the entire book and you really care about the animal, they go and tell you about how the animal died.
— Stacy O'Brien in Wesley The Owl, as the chapter about Wesley's death of advanced old age begins.
Obviously, until you write Fuck it, We're All Going To Die, the Newbery Medal will go to people like me, Stephen.
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
I have a bad feeling that they're only letting you have a dog in order to murder it later, leaving players devastated.
If there is a boy in these kinds of books, he will not go on an adventure to fight against Librarians, paper monsters, and one-eyed Dark Oculators. In fact, the lad will not go on an adventure or fight against anything at all. Instead, his dog will die. Or, in some cases, his mother will die. If it's a really meaningful book, both his dog and his mother will die. (Apparently, most writers have something against dogs and mothers.)
— Alcatraz Smedry, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians
Oh! Remember the funny movie where the dog dies?
—Sadness, Inside Out
I'm not really sure what makes a book a "classic" to begin with, but I think it has to be at least 50 years old and some person or animal has to die at the end.
—Greg Heffley, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
"When I was a kid, someone told me the end of The Giver was ambiguous, which surprised me. I had just assumed Jonah died — because the book had a medal on the cover, and I knew grown-ups liked stories where sad stuff happens at the end for no reason."
"And what? The dog didn't die, did it? I hate stories where the dog dies!"
— Balder, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, "9 From the Nine Worlds"
'"It's fine- you know, I'm into aliens and suicide and love triangles too- but the problem is that it makes us feel like real lives are lame. Like the only meaningful things that can happen are death and trauma and psychotic episodes."
— Charlotte, in Anne Barrows' Nothing
Louise: And so, apparently, in all children's literature, a really nice animal dies in the end. And that is not cool, reading, not cool.
Mr. Ambrose: Yeah, you said it, honey.
Mr. Ambrose: Yeah, you said it, honey.
— Bob's Burgers, "The Silence of the Louise"
Let's get this part over with—it's no secret.
Just like Old Yeller, Sounder, Old Dan, and Little Ann all died. Except those dogs were fictional. You cried, I cried when fake dogs died. But Maxi was real.
— Maxi's Secrets
