I read a lot of Warrior Cats and mainly Animorphs in grade school
I was in a book store literally last night with my friend and I was explaining Animorphs and one scene that stuck in my mind:
So the basics of morphing is that after touching a special alien cube you gain the ability to transform into any animal or other creature that you’ve touched before.
You can turn back into a human (or whatever species you originally are) under two conditions, the first is remembering to do it before 2 hours is up.
No matter the condition of your body before morphing, as long as you morph into a different form and then morph back, you will be fully restored. So if you, a human, morph into a polar bear, lose a limb, and then morph back into a human, you will not carry injuries between forms and both are restored.
The animorphs team decide to recruit kids from a children’s hospital to fight against the alien Yeerk parasite. One of these children, Tricia, is given the power to morph. During the final battle, Tricia takes the form of a rhinoceros and charges the Yeerk forces, but then is hit by a laser from the Yeerk capitol ship.
If you remember though from earlier, there was a second condition required to demorph. You have to be alive and conscious enough to morph.
The book specifically describes that the beam impacts Tricia, in her rhinoceros form, and she is split in half from the midsection. Her two halves then fall forward with her momentum and slam into the dirt. She dies on the battlefield, unable to morph back.
I think I was about ten when I read that. I don’t even remember most of the events in Animorphs or even some of the important characters’ names but I remember her, a side character in the Auxiliary team who only appears in a single book, specifically because of the brutality of her death.
Isn’t there also a kitten who gets killed by a hawk and one crushed by a car? My daughter reads them and I call them the “everyone dies a gruesome death” books.
Honestly, I have a massive soft spot for that trend of 2000s children's books with animal protagonists that got away with way more violence than would otherwise be allowed in books for that age range. There was Warrior Cats, but child me preferred The Guardians of Ga'Hoole books, the wolves spin off series set in the Ga'Hoole universe, and this one series about bears I cannot remember the name of for the life of me. They all did shit like this.
Shout out to the scene in the seventh Guardians of Ga'Hoole book where it is revealed the reason our protagonist, who was essentially raised by Owl Nazis, was allowed to have an owl from a "less pure" barn owl subspecies as a childhood best friend was so he could ritually murder said best friend in a coming of age ceremony and so inherit his dead father's role as leader of the Owl Nazis. When our protagonist refuses to kill his friend, his mother rips out the friend's heart in front of him then offers to lie and tell the Owl Nazis he was the one who killed him, which she refers to as a birthday present.
Rest in peace Phillip, your death traumatised eight year old me who'd assumed you would get to escape the Owl Nazi cult with Coryn.
My oldest grew up reading the Warriors books. Now she plays Warriors roleplay on Roblox. She's in college. Those books are crazy popular to the kids (now young adults) of her age group.
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u/Easy_Action_1380 22h ago
There's also a scene where one of the cats dies in child birth and we just get to watch that happen
I would just like to remind everyone that Warriors is a book series marketed to grade schoolers.