A series of Unfortunate events: The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket.

As the three Baudelaire orphans warily approach their new home Prufrock Preparatory School, they can’t help but notice the enormous stone arch bearing the school’s motto Memento Mori or “Remember you will die. This is not a cheerful greeting and certainly marks an inauspicious beginning to a very bleak story just as we have come to expect from Lemony Snicket.