I read it this year to kids and the book says basically - no biggie, there is no death, you commit suicide to move to another level to be with your brother, you can't lose him, you have infinite lives in this videogame called Life.
And what if I F up the next level? no biggie, you just commit suicide again to be with him, there is no such thing as death, after each death you just move to another level.
So there is no risk at all you will lose your brother/relative, very F up thing to teach the kids, exactly opposite from what should make them scared of dying which is PERMANENT and there is no next level, where you can be with your family again.
That's such a dishonest read of the book I don't actually know what to say. To me, joining Johnathan at the end is the conclusion of the entire book of love, loyalty and bravery. Nowhere does it say "meh, no biggie just kill yourself". If that's the message you took from it then I strongly encourage you to sit down one evening and read it again. The biggest "proof" of it not being treated lightly is obviously all the inhabitants of the valley of cherries enduring, surviving and fighting against oppression instead of as "just killing themselves" to go to the next level. Even at the end Johnathan makes it sound like it's a rumour and maybe there is something there, but no one knows for sure, same as naningalia was at the beginning - people hope there is a better afterlife, but that's all it is - hope.
The "dishonest read" is a strange accusation. I think I was about 11 or 12 when I read the book and my reaction was - "err, so they just going to keep killing themselves willy-nilly? Well thats a bit dumb". I did like the story though and reread the book later several times, but the suicide bits felt always so weird.
Dishonest as in - it requires ignoring 99% of the book and focusing on the last couple pages, ignoring the entire struggle, bravery and sacrifice that lead to that moment.
>>err, so they just going to keep killing themselves willy-nilly
Well so your 12 year old self I guess missed the part where Johnathan was mortally wounded and about to die. The fact that Karl decides to join him in death is not a glorification of suicide, and I don't know how it could possibly be read that way. There's literally nothing willy-nilly about it - again, it doesn't appear to be some well known fact or even a fact at all that there is another "level" beyond that one - it's a guess, a hope at best. And Karl decides to jump with his dearest brother because(as made incredibly explicit multiple times throughout the entire book) - he loves him more than anything in the world and cannot imagine parting with him again. You make it sound like a video game where characters go "meh, let's try again" - it's absolutely not so. Before he died the first time, Karl wasn't sure if Johnathan was telling the truth about afterlife or if he wanted to just make him feel better in his ilness - and now that Johnathan was mortally wounded, Karl knew that only bravery and hope and love for the people you care about is worth living(and dying) for. That's what the book is about.
In my first comment I even made this explicit - I said that as an adult, this book makes me appreciate the finality of death - and you might ask, how is that so, given that in this world it looks like you can just keep dying over and over again only to go to higher planes of existence. And the answer is simple - with every death, you lose everything except for hope. Hope that you are going to wake up again in a better world and that the people you love will still be there. But you don't know. In my personal life I don't believe in it - but for children, this is the greatest gift - hope. Especially struggling ones that see no bright path anywhere - hope is all they have. And as you can tell, for majority of the book the hope was "we can win persevere against hardship and evil" and not "we can kill ourselves and hope the next world is better".
And what if I F up the next level? no biggie, you just commit suicide again to be with him, there is no such thing as death, after each death you just move to another level.
So there is no risk at all you will lose your brother/relative, very F up thing to teach the kids, exactly opposite from what should make them scared of dying which is PERMANENT and there is no next level, where you can be with your family again.