ITT: Dark or Violent Scenes in Children's and Young Adult Books

>>8425761

>Toklo shifted around and discovered that his brother was curled against his back, his paws tucked into his chest. When Toklo moved, Tobi pressed his paws to his face, scraped them down his muzzle once, and then lay still. His breathing became shallow and quick and smelled funny.
>Toklo nosed closer to him, smelling the same sharp sent he'd noticed on Tobi yesterday. His brother's fur was cold, colder than even Toklo had been the night before. He realized with a start that Tobi's eyes were wide open. Toklo put his face in front of Tobi's and waited for a reaction, but there was nothing. Tobi's eyes were foggy, as if he were seeing clouds instead of his brother.
>""Tobi", Toklo whispered. His brother's ears didn't even twitch. Toklo cautiously put out a paw and touched his brother's side. He could feel Tobi's breaths getting faster and then suddenly they went very slow.
>"Tobi," he tried again. "Tobi, are you going to the river? Are you going to be a water spirit?" There was no answer. Toklo was afraid but fascinated, too. How did a bear become a water spirit?
>Tobi took a long, shuddering breath, then went still. Toklo quickly drew back his paw. He sat up and sniffed along the length of Tobi's body. There was a sharp, rotten smell but now something was missing. Tobi's eyes were closed.
>He was dead,

Books about talking animals often get lumped in with other kinds of children's fiction.

I think though that talking animal books are usually either fables - where the animals are metaphors for types people, or else naturalistic stories which try to express some concept of the life of an animal in a way a human can understand - and these latter kind almost necessitate the touch of death to warrant completeness.

>>8425909

They're not talking animals, they're xenofiction. They don't speak with humans. Their language is "translated".