Deadly Animals

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying, mental illness, child abuse, child death, death by suicide, animal death, and graphic violence.

Ava Bonney is the 14-year-old protagonist of the text. Ava’s unusual interests and her working-class background make her stand out at school, so she gets bullied. Ava keeps a secret roadkill body farm where she studies dead animals. She loves animals and mourns for each creature she studies, even giving them proper burials and praying for them, reciting the Rabbit’s Prayer from Richard Adams’s novel Watership Down. Ava is also an avid reader of nonfiction, which gives her a vast knowledge of history and unconventional crimes. She is deeply curious, often to the point of obsession, and is “prone to jumping to conclusions” because of her strong imagination (268). Ava feels that she must keep her interests a secret because they are unusual for a child. Ava’s mother’s criticisms make Ava shy to speak up around others, but the respect Delahaye affords Ava makes her confidence grow throughout the text, and she becomes more assured in speaking her mind.

Ava has a talent for imitations and speaking in voices, which she puts to use with the children in the neighborhood when she reads books to them.