When Is Death Appropriate in Children’s Stories?

I was chatting with some friends the other day about the latest Harry Potter book when one of the women mentioned that she thought the book would be too scary for her 10-year old; after all, characters were starting to get maimed and killed off left and right. This got us discussing the concept of death in children’s stories.

The big question was: When, if ever, is it okay to include death in a story for a young child?

Based on many years of telling kids stories, here’s my best advice: More than anything, context is important. Death is acceptable, even in stories for very young children, as long as it comes in the beginning of the story and happens to only peripheral or undeveloped characters. Or put another way, children normally have little problem accepting death as part of the story if it doesn’t happen to a character they know and love.

Just think about Bambi, Heidi, or even The Secret Garden. Having the parents die at the very beginning of a story is one of several ways to accomplish one of children’s storytelling biggest goals—to get adults out of the picture so the children can have their own adventures. I use exactly this tactic in two of my stories: Fiona the Smart Ghost and Rainbow of the Sioux.

The conversation about Harry Potter got me thinking about how much more protective we are of our children these days than in centuries past. If you’ve ever taken the time to read one of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in their original form, you know that children’s stories were once much more gruesome. (Check out The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, by Bruno Bettelheim for more on the subject.) Nowadays, in many versions of the 3 Pigs, even the Big Bad Wolf lives happily ever after. Is this progress or have we become overprotective of our little ones?

I think the instinct to protect our small children from violent death is sensible. (And I never liked Grimm’s Fairy Tales because they could be so—well, grim. But this doesn’t mean we shelter our kids to the extreme of pretending that death does not exist—any cover-up that defies reality will surely backfire.