I meant to do standard "winner of # 1 faces winner of # 2" bracketing, but was forced to shake it up as the contenders in the "You have to shoot your beloved pet" category tied. Also, I added a couple that I forgot last time. Katherine Paterson now has her own category!
[Poll #1139019]
[Poll #1139019]
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This is awesome.
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---L.
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Ah, my personal best (worst?) in the Dead Dog category: Ernest Thompson Seaton's Wild Animals I Have Known. Not only does the dog die: the crow dies, the partridge dies, the mommy bunny dies (oddly enough, the protagonist bunny lives), the, uh, other dog dies, the human protagonist gets his leg caught in a wolf trap (I laughed), and the ENTIRE WOLF PACK DIES.
Top that.
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12 foot doesn't work? See how he likes a 24 foot jump.
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Maybe I'd have a kinder take on simply managing to build a life, now. :-) I very much like Tehanu now, after all, and I hated that book when I first read it. (And went from "why isn't Tenar having adventures?" to "Wow, look at this real and fulfilling life she managed to build in spite of her twisted childhood.")
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(OTOH, the ending to Of Nightingales that weep creeped me out to no end when I was younger.)
I never read Tehanu, because as long as I don't Tenar can do whatever she wants with her life. ;-)
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When I figure out what that says about me, I'll let you know.
Right after I figure out why I find dead orangutans more disturbing than the end of the world.
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I think I mentally retconned it into her being not actually dead, in some handwavy fashion. Washed away in the flood but would show up again on his doorstep someday, or... something.
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I am so glad I never read anything other than Jacob, but even that was enough arrrrrrrrrggggggghhhh.
And I read through your comments last night and OMG I had totally forgotten that the heroine delivers twins and one nearly dies and the whole thing *starts all over again*.
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2. Dies of grief, Rachel. DIES OF GRIEF.
3. AND YOU'RE A CLONE.
4. PUT DOWN.
5. INSANE.
6. Okay, see, all your pets are euthanized, and that's sad. But, dude, YOU HAVE TO SHOOT YOUR PET DEER...BECAUSE HE WAS EATING VEGETABLES? WTF?!
7. YOU. Have to SHOOT. Your DOG. Who is now INSANE.
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It does strike me as kind of weird that even though everybody hated that as kids, a good 70% of rabid-dog-shooting-novel haters grew up to love zombie movies, which follow exactly the same tear-jerking YOU LOVED HIM, YOU BE THE ONE TO KILL HIM plot point, except it's not your dog, it's like your MOM or something. And the rest of the world. And maybe also your dog too.
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P.
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I had to pick the kitten for "foot of fate" and I picked dog-on-dog massacre because I am still amused by the title Bob, Son of Battle.
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OTOH, I don't find the situation itself horrible, as phrased (it could be a good manga!), but Jacob Have I Loved always left me feeling dirty. I'm not sure I've ever hated a book that viscerally in my life, and until now I figured I was the only one who loathed it. I don't think a happy ending would have saved it for me, either.
(Sidebar: in my world, "and you're a clone" registers as awesome, not heartrending. Probably because it sounds like sf, and the sff YA wasn't agonizing!)
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The fact that there's such a close tie between animals dying and winning awards has me feeling ever so much better about some of the changes I had to make during the final editorial revisions of Bones. :-)
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We mostly read a different set of needlessly depressing children's/YA books in the UK. Ones that won the Carnegie Medal. And they're usually not quite as depressing.
It's neck-and-neck between orangutan extinction/clone and apocalypse/starvation guilt-trip, and I honestly can't remember which I chose. I think I came down on the side of human (almost) extinction against orangutan (almost) extinction.
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Gah. I'm *still* traumatised by that.
(The English title is something like "The dog that stopped the war".)
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