Giving Kids an Edge

Television and books for kids today feels different than I remember. Starting in late elementary school, I began reading what became the most influential book series for my teen years. Don't laugh. Animorphs.
Animorphs had everything a preteen kid could want in a book series. It had action, violence, imagination, and most importantly, a heaping dose of angst. I was drawn into the series for its casual dialogue, cookie cutter drama, and it's descriptions of kids transforming into animals to fight evil aliens (seriously how cool is that?). Unlike many other similar kids series however, a gradually changing mood coursed of all 50-something books, lending an immense amount of depth to the series as a whole. What I remember most about Animorphs now is that it was the first story whose ending utterly disgusted me when I read it. It was well written, pertinent to wrapping up the story, and it single-handedly destroyed every single one of the characters I grew up loving.

With its ending, Animorphs became the first story I was completely engaged in that ended on the complete opposite side of where I wanted it to end. It would probably be melodramatic to say that was my moment of disillusionment, but certainly it was the first story that ended with a jarring outside-the-story-book-world message. Six kids manage to uphold their friendships and moral ideals when united by a common goal as a guerrilla force focused on surviving the war until help can arrive. But a war of difficult, mind breaking decisions takes its toll when the time comes to finally end it; the aftermath leaving the survivors detached and unfucntionable in the world they save. Lately I looked at what is marketed to kids of the same age and I don't see anything comparable to my old Animorphs.

Is society drifting away from harsh "reality" themes for more pleasing cultural ideals or am I just too distant from what kids are reading? I'm optimistically inclined to think the later, but realistically I think probably both.