Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson won the 1978 Newbery Award. Jess Aarons the narrator and protagonist is a lonely 10 year old who secretly draws, longs to be the fastest kid in school, and is sandwiched into a family of sisters. Leslie Burke moves into the farm house next to theirs, and they develop one of the most beautiful literary friendships between two kids, often escaping to their private woods across a creek bed where they pretend to rule as King and Queen of the Imaginary Land of Terabithia. Warning (because there are probably a few people in the world who don’t know this book, but only a few), it has a very sad ending and the rest of this post is going to be full of spoilers about that ending. So stop reading this post and go get the book (or the audiobook is excellent) if you don’t want the ending ruined.
What I liked. This was one of my favorite books from elementary school days, but oddly enough one of the books that my husband Evan liked least. (We definitely have different books we are drawn to, but many of the books that we deeply love are shared.) My memory of the book was of the magical imaginative kingdom and the friendship between Jess and Leslie, with a vague sense that the ending was sad. While Evan remembered the book as primarily [spoiler alert] the “book to teach kids about death” and felt a bit hit over the head with the message. I have since heard a number of stories of people’s strong reactions to this book. At an amazing book talk, I heard Kate DiCamillo tell the story of her friend’s son throwing the book across the room, storming downstairs with tears streaming down his face saying he was so angry at Aunt Kate for telling him to read it. Or on the sorta awesome podcast episode 170, Knox McCoy and Meg Tiez talked about trying not to cry uncontrollably in class when it was read to them as kids.
In going back to re-read this book I was worried that I was going to have the experience be marred by knowing Leslie dies, but really my very favorite parts of the book were the same as when I first read it: the land of Terabithia.
I was a kid who was big into imaginative games, and while I picked up that my peers stopped playing those games enough so that I didn’t embarrass myself suggesting it, I kept playing them myself (and with my amazing cousins when we’d get together) and eventually just kept them inside my head (and now I write them down). So that image of the forest, and sharing the imaginative kingdom with a friend, was such a powerful one for me. And the ending with Jess bringing May Belle over was really such a hopeful way to end such a sad book without being sappy.
What was interesting. I think what I thought was very interesting about the book was seeing the parents as a parent myself. I remember Mr. and Mrs. Aarons not being particularly engaged at the beginning of the book, but when Leslie dies they really step up to help Jess. (And that was a pretty accurate memory.) But the way the parents were tired and consumed with their own problems and so easily nagged Jess—that seems so much easier to imagine how that can happen now that I’m a parent. It is easy to just assume you know why your kid is doing something, to yell from across the room for them to stop (what you assume they’re doing), and to nag them to get on with what they are doing, until you’re snapped out of it by something serious that gets you to really look up and see your kid and what they need. Actually I just finished reading a really great, although thin on advice for toddlers, book about cooperative problem solving that addressed this very thing called Raising Human Beings.
What were some limitations. I have to say one of the more striking parts about reading the book this time was how critical the narrator Jess was about fat people (his teacher: Mrs. Myers, the seventh grade school bully: Janice Avery, and his older sister). Of course, I understand that when you are a little kid having someone outweigh you, whether that is with a lean body mass or not, can make them intimidating and able to push you around. And it’s totally within an author’s right to have a first person main character have uncharitable thoughts about another character (whether race, gender, socio-economic status, religion, etc.).
All of the fat character’s relationships with Jess went through varying degrees of growth and change over the book’s course (And at least with Mrs. Myers he regrets some of the things he and Leslie thought about her). But I suppose that since I’ve been reading a lot about body image and fat acceptance recently, it just sort of struck me that really here was an example of how someone’s (perceived) moral short comings were expressed via body composition. In another of Kathleen Paterson’s other books, the The Great Gilly Hopkins, Mrs. Trotter is a morbidly obese woman who is by far one of the kindest and most wonderful characters, so this issue does seem to be specific to Jess’s point of view.
Similarity to other Newbery winners. Bridge to Terabithia has some similarities to previous coming of age stories about male protagonists (Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze, Dobry (also about a visual artist), …And Now Miguel and It’s Like This, Cat), but I would say the most striking feature of Bridge to Terabithia is the strong male-female friendship like in The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Bronze Bow, A Wrinkle in Time, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and Summer of the Swans. As far as death of main characters go, Amos Fortune, Free Man and Carry On, Mr. Bowditch both have wives die, Johnny Tremain, The Bronze Bow, Shadow of a Bull, I, Juan de Pareja, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Up a Road Slowly, Sounder, Summer of the Swans, and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH all have parents die (and I’m probably missing some; parents seem to be perpetually dying in kids books), Sounder, The Grey King, Island of the Blue Dolphins all have dogs die (as well as a close family member). And there is a lot of death in The Slave Dancer. But there is something distinctive about Leslie’s death that is different from the other books.
What it teaches me as a writer. One thing that I thought was most interesting about this reading of Bridge to Terabithia was the interview after the novel (in the audio version) with Kathleen and her son David Patterson (David was the screenwriter and producer in the 2007 film version). In this interview, David remarked that people (like myself) have such fond memories of the magical land of Terabithia, but he points out in the interview that the description of Terabithia is only a dozen or so pages with most of the book set in Jess’s school or home or at Leslie’s house. David Paterson suggests that people projected a lot of their own thoughts on an imaginary kingdom into that place. Sometimes people would even share memories of something that they remember about the kingdom that weren’t in the book at all. And Kathleen Paterson notes that while she is not sure how she did it (if she were sure, she’d do it all the time!) that she wrote that book in such a way that people often saw their own story reflected back in it throughout the book. It reminds me that with writing fantasy and friendship that writing it well is not only about getting down the rich imagery in my head, but also leaving room for the reader to co-create the world with me. I’m not exactly sure how to do that, but I’m thinking about it.
Have you read Bridge to Terabithia? What are your favorite sad-ending books ?
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