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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24199
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

There are actually quite a lot of popular and critically acclaimed children's books with tragic elements. Many kids dislike these, of course: I remember despising _Bridge to Terebithia_ as a child, and Gordon Korman even wrote a book called _No More Dead Dogs_ mocking the prevalence of the [dead pet subgenre](http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/675.The_dog_dies_a_cautionary_list_) of children's books. However, they are popular among parents and teachers, and even some children love them.

However, unlike adults, who have some experience of both life and literature to fall back on, children are new to the world, and things can accordingly have a much more powerful impact on them. They may take what they read as a model to follow, or a foreshadowing of what life will actually be like for them. For that reason, I'd suggest either writing a positive, life-affirming book with tragic elements (_Charlotte's Web_) or a bleak, dark book with a happy ending (_The Wolves of Willougby Chase_) because where an adult might find a bleak book followed by a bleak ending cathartic and even perhaps pleasurable, a child is likely to just find it horribly depressing.

You might ask yourself why you want to write this book _for_ children. There are a number of tragic books _about_ children but _for_ adults, is it possible you want to write one of those? Typically most serious children's book have some aspect of teaching, what do you want your reader to learn? Most tragic children's books have the theme that death is a part of life, but life is still worth living. If you're contradicting that lesson, you'll get a lot of resistance (and perhaps rightfully so).

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