Notes For October 21st, 2026
Leslie Burke, the female lead, is an outgoing tomboy with androgynous looks, as seen in the book's illustrations and in this description of Jess's first impression of her:
"If you're so afraid of the cow," the voice said, "why don't you just climb the fence?"
He paused in midair like a stop-action TV shot and turned, almost losing his balance, to face the questioner, who was sitting on the fence nearest the old Perkins place, dangling bare brown legs. The person had jaggedy brown hair cut close to its face and wore one of those blue undershirtlike tops with faded jeans cut off above the knees. He couldn't honestly tell whether it was a girl or a boy.
"Hi," he or she said, jerking his or her head toward the Perkins place. "We just moved in."
Jess stood where he was, staring.
The person slid off the fence and came toward him. "I thought we might as well be friends," it said. "There's no one else close by."
Girl, he decided. Definitely a girl, but he couldn't have said why he was suddenly sure. She was about his height - not quite though, he was pleased to realize as she came nearer.
"My name's Leslie Burke."
She even had one of those dumb names that could go either way, but he was sure now that he was right. Leslie's liberal, intellectual parents accept her for who she is, but her unusual appearance alienates her from the other kids and makes her the subject of ridicule. She and Jess form a close bond. They're both outcasts - and kindred spirits. Different, yet the same. Yin and yang.
They never make any romantic gestures to each other, but their emotional bond grows deep over the course of the novel. When Leslie starts helping her father renovate their house, Jess feels left out in the cold and hurt, and longs to be with her. She has a simple, Zen-like solution: "You could offer to help, you know." And he does.
Jess had blamed Leslie's father for taking her away from him, but the great tragedy of the novel is the accident that takes her away from him forever, just as their relationship was starting to bloom into something even more beautiful. They were truly soulmates.
The character of Leslie Burke has become something of a queer icon; Katherine Paterson spoke of a letter she received from a young woman who, at Leslie's age, was a gender nonconformist and first recognized herself as a lesbian. Then she read Bridge To Terabithia, and the novel helped her accept herself, rescuing her from a quagmire of self-loathing and depression.
Paterson said that while Leslie Burke was never intended to be a queer character, the letter moved her to tears and she was proud that LGBTQ+ youth identified with Leslie and found comfort in her book.
Unfortunately, the 2007 Disney film adaptation neuters the progressive gender nonconformity themes. Here, a strikingly pretty blond-haired girl, AnnaSophia Robb, was cast as Leslie. This Leslie's only nonconformity is a taste for loud (but not too masculine) clothing.
Why was this done? Because for years, Disney had faced constant attacks from conservatives and religious groups for "promoting the liberal and homosexual agendas." The attacks never stopped.
Disney recently made headlines for bowing to fascism and agreeing to President Donald Trump's demand that popular comedian Jimmy Kimmel be removed from his late night talk show on the ABC TV network (owned by Disney) for constantly making fun of Trump.
The backlash was immediate and furious. There were mass cancellations of Disney-owned streaming service subscriptions and vows to boycott Disney movies. Hundreds of Hollywood actors signed a pledge vowing to never appear in any movie or on any TV show produced by a Disney-owned studio. In less than a week, Disney lost four billion dollars in market value.
They had no choice but to bring Jimmy Kimmel back. The company still faces a lawsuit from its shareholders for costing them four billion dollars with their cowardly, idiotic decision to remove Kimmel.
Though Bridge To Terabithia is a very 1970s novel, its timeless themes of friendship, sudden, unexpected tragedy, and coping with loss are still relevant today, with the epidemic of school shootings and other unexpected acts of violence like terrorist attacks.
Katherine Paterson said she agreed with the criticism that she only scratched the surface of the grieving and healing processes of the bereaved; her publisher had asked her to tread delicately in those waters. In reality, the tragic death of Lisa Hill, the inspiration for the book, had a huge impact on her and her son David, and would always remain with them.
This Day In Literary History
On October 21st, 1977, Bridge To Terabithia, the classic novel by the legendary American children's book writer Katherine Paterson, was published. It was inspired by a real life tragedy that affected the author and her son.
Katherine Paterson had already established herself as an acclaimed and popular children's author with her first two books, The Sign Of The Chrysanthemum (1973) and Of Nightingales That Weep (1974), when her then eight-year-old son David lost his best and only friend.
Her name was Lisa Hill. A bright, vivacious, and imaginative little girl, she was struck by lightning and killed while at the beach with her family. David Paterson was devastated and traumatized by his sudden loss, and his mother was deeply affected by it as well. She was battling breast cancer at the time.
After publishing her third novel, The Master Puppeteer (1975), Katherine Paterson and her son still struggled to cope with Lisa Hill's death. So, for her next book, she decided to write a story about a close friendship between a young boy and girl cut short by tragedy.
Paterson would later say that writing the book was a therapeutic exercise that helped her and David make some sense out of a senseless tragedy.
Bridge To Terabithia is set in Lark Creek, a small town in rural Virginia. The novel opens with 10-year-old farm boy Jess Aarons going out for a morning run before breakfast.
The introverted, artistically gifted Jess has no friends, but hopes to win his peers' admiration and respect when school starts by becoming the fastest boy in the fifth grade and winning the races held during recess.
When Jess returns from his practice run, we get a look at his bleak home life. His family is large and poor. His two older sisters, Brenda and Ellie, are mean to him. His younger sisters, May Belle and Joyce Ann, adore him, but also annoy him, as he must share a bedroom with them.
His mother favors her daughters over her son and always yells at him. Jess's father lavishes affection on his younger daughters but is emotionally distant from his son and shows him no affection. He's often gruff and foul tempered, especially to Jess.
As he has to commute over an hour each way to Washington, D.C. to work as a day laborer because farming doesn't pay enough to support his large family, Mr. Aarons is rarely in a good mood.
At school, Jess's teacher is a nasty, foul-tempered, obese older woman named Mrs. Myers, nicknamed "Monster Mouth" by her students for obvious reasons. The music teacher, Miss Edmunds, is young and pretty, and the only adult in Jess's world who seems to care about him.
She admires his artistic talent and encourages him to keep drawing. She's a nonconformist like Jess, who sees her as "his fellow outlaw" and has a huge crush on her:
"Sounds like some kinda hippie," his mother had said when Brenda, who had been in seventh grade last year, described Miss Edmunds to her.
She probably was. Jess wouldn't argue that, but he saw her as a beautiful wild creature who had been caught for a moment in that dirty old cage of a schoolhouse, perhaps by mistake. But he hoped, he prayed, she'd never get loose and fly away. He managed to endure the whole boring week of school for that one half hour on Friday afternoons when they'd sit on the worn-out rug on the floor of the teachers' room (there was no place else in the building for Miss Edmunds to spread out all her stuff) and sing songs like "My Beautiful Balloon," "This Land Is Your Land," "Free to Be You and Me," "Blowing in the Wind" and because Mr. Turner, the principal, insisted, "God Bless America."
Miss Edmunds would play her guitar and let the kids take turns on the autoharp, the triangles, cymbals, tambourines, and bongo drum. Lord, could they ever make a racket! All the teachers hated Fridays. And a lot of the kids pretended to.
But Jess knew what fakes they were. Sniffing "hippie" and "peacenik" even though the Vietnam War was over and it was supposed to be OK again to like peace, the kids would make fun of Miss Edmunds' lack of lipstick or the cut of her jeans. She was, of course, the only female teacher anyone had ever seen in Lark Creek Elementary wearing pants. In Washington and its fancy suburbs, even in Millsburg, that was OK, but Lark Creek was the backwash of fashion. It took them a long time to accept there what everyone could see by their TV's was OK anywhere else.
So the students of Lark Creek Elementary sat at their desks all Friday, their hearts thumping with anticipation as they listened to the joyful pandemonium pouring out from the teachers' room, spent their allotted half hours with Miss Edmunds under the spell of her wild beauty and in the snare of her enthusiasms, and then went out and pretended that they couldn't be suckered by some hippie in tight jeans with makeup all over her eyes but none on her mouth.
Jess just kept his mouth shut. It wouldn't help to try to defend Miss Edmunds against their unjust and hypocritical attacks. Besides, she was beyond such stupid behavior. It couldn't touch her. But whenever possible, he stole a few minutes on Friday just to stand close to her and hear her voice, soft and smooth as suede, assuring him that he was a "neat kid."
We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds. Beautiful Julia. The syllables rolled through his head like a ripple of guitar chords. We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me. "You're the proverbial diamond in the rough," she'd said to him once, touching his nose lightly with the tip of her electrifying finger. But it was she who was the diamond, sparkling out of that muddy, grassless, dirty-brick setting.
Jess's artistic talent is a source of consternation for his ignorant father, who worries that a passion for drawing poses a threat to his only son's masculinity:
He would like to show his drawings to his dad, but he didn't dare. When he was in first grade, he had told his dad that he wanted to be an artist when he grew up. He'd thought his dad would be pleased. He wasn't. "What are they teaching in that damn school?" he had asked. "Bunch of old ladies turning my only son into some kind of a..." He had stopped on the word, but Jess had gotten the message. It was one you didn't forget, even after four years.
Into Jess's dark world comes a ray of sunshine in the form of a new girl who moves in next door. Leslie Burke is Jess's age. She's an intelligent, vivacious tomboy from the city whose parents are both writers.
The Burkes are wealthy, but don't own a TV set. They prefer that their daughter call them by their first names (Judy and Bill) instead of Mom and Dad. They're liberal and non-religious.
The Aaronses, like most people in Lark Creek, are Christian fundamentalists, but they only attend church once a year - on Easter Sunday - because Mrs. Aarons "got mad at the preacher." Jess has no use for church:
Church always seemed the same. Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the rest of the congregation but his mind numb and floating, not really thinking or dreaming but at least free.
Jess and Leslie don't become friends when they first meet. Leslie joins Mrs. Myers' class and then runs against the boys in the races at recess. She beats Jess in their heat, eliminating him from the races and crushing his dream of being the fastest kid in the fifth grade.
Nevertheless, when Gary Fulcher, a bully, refuses to let Leslie run in the finals because she's a girl, Jess stands up for her. Fulcher lets her run, and she beats him. She outruns the other boys as well, humiliating them. Hardly a way to start a friendship, but soon, Jess and Leslie become inseparable.
Deciding that she and Jess need a place of their own, Leslie chooses a forest clearing on the other side of a creek bed near their homes. In order to reach their secret land, they swing across the creek bed on an old rope tied to a tree branch:
They took turns swinging across the gully on the rope. It was a glorious autumn day, and if you looked up as you swung, it gave you the feeling of floating. Jess leaned back and drank in the rich, clear color of the sky. He was drifting, drifting like a fat white lazy cloud back and forth across the blue.
"Do you know what we need?" Leslie called to him. Intoxicated as he was with the heavens, he couldn't imagine needing anything on earth.
"We need a place," she said. "just for us. It would be so secret that we would never tell anyone in the whole world about it." Jess came swinging back and dragged his feet to stop. She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. "It might be a whole secret country," she continued, "and you and I would be the rulers of it."
Her words stirred inside of him. He'd like to be a ruler of something. Even something that wasn't real. "OK," he said. "Where could we have it?"
"Over there in the woods where nobody would come and mess it up."
There were parts of the woods that Jess did not like. Dark places where it was almost like being under water, but he didn't say so.
"I know" - she was getting excited - "it could be a magic country like Narnia, and the only way you can get in is by swinging across on this enchanted rope." Her eyes were bright. She grabbed the rope. "Come on," she said. "Let's find a place to build our castle stronghold..."
Leslie names their magical land Terabithia. There, they rule as king and queen, though Jess, who is in awe of Leslie, feels unworthy of being her king. In Terabithia, Jess and Leslie grow closer as she draws him into her world of imagination.
But Terabithia isn't just a secluded place where Jess and Leslie can be together and let their imaginations run free - it's their refuge from the cruel outside world that doesn't understand them. Leslie builds up Jess's low self-esteem and makes him feel good about himself.
Together, there's nothing that Jess and Leslie can't do. When another bully, Janice Avery, steals food from Jess's little sister May Belle, he and Leslie get even by playing a brilliantly conceived and executed practical joke to humiliate Janice in front of the other kids.
Later, when Leslie tells Jess that she heard Janice crying in the girls' bathroom, he talks Leslie into reaching out to her. They learn that she is being abused by her father - brutally beaten - which is why she became a bully.
Though Jess likes Leslie's parents, he's uncomfortable having her over at his house. His sisters tease him about his "girlfriend," his mother hates Leslie's boyish looks and clothes, his father keeps "fretting that his only son did nothing but play with girls," and both his parents are "worried about what would become of it."
The most moving scenes between Jess and Leslie take place at Christmas. As the holiday approaches, while other kids are happy and excited, Jess is racked with dread. There's so little money for Christmas this year that after he buys presents for his family members, he won't have anything left to buy Leslie a present:
He was angry, too, because it would soon be Christmas and he had nothing to give Leslie. It was not that she would expect something expensive; it was that he needed to give her something as much as he needed to eat when he was hungry.
But then one day, on the way home from school, he sees a sign that says "Puppies Free." On Christmas Eve afternoon, Jess and Leslie exchange presents in Terabithia. She loves her new puppy, whom she names Prince Terrien. Then she gives Jess his present - a deluxe art set "with twenty-four tubes of color and three brushes and a pad of heavy art paper."
On Christmas morning, Jess is glad to see May Belle playing with the Barbie doll he chipped in to buy, but his father is less than happy with the electric car racing set that he gave Jess. It's a low-end model and doesn't work well, though Jess knows that his father probably spent more than he could afford to on it.
Jess couldn't care less about a car racing set - it's the thought that counts. So he tries in vain to get the cars to work for his father's sake. Mr. Aarons curses them and snarls, "Cheap junk. Don't get nothing for your money these days." He almost kicks the toy.
Jess is relieved when his mother sends him out to milk the family's cow, Miss Bessie. When he leaves the house, Leslie, who's been waiting for him, runs to him, followed by Prince Terrien, and "It felt like Christmas again."
In the spring, when Leslie asks if she can go to church with Jess and his family for Easter services, (she's never been to a church before) his mother grudgingly gives her permission. Leslie shows up for church nicely dressed and is well mannered.
On the way home, Leslie wonders why Jess, who is a Christian, hates church so much while she, a nonbeliever, thinks that the story of Jesus is beautiful. May Belle warns her that she has to believe in the Bible, or else God will send her to Hell when she dies. Leslie disagrees.
The closer Jess grows to Leslie, the less he thinks about Miss Edmunds, the music teacher he has a crush on. But one morning, Jess is stunned when she unexpectedly calls and invites him out to an art gallery in Washington.
Blogmaster's note: this completely innocent scene is considered shocking by modern readers. In the 1970s, when the book was published, a teacher like Miss Edmunds would be praised for her conscientiousness. Sadly, the times have changed, and today, she would be investigated for improper conduct with a student.
Thrilled to be able to spend time with Miss Edmunds outside of music class, he goes off with her, asking his sleeping mother for permission. He forgets to call Leslie and tell her that he won't be meeting her in Terabithia.
Jess loves the art gallery, but chastises himself for not inviting Leslie along. It's just not the same without her. He promises himself that he will invite her next time. Sadly, there won't be a next time. When Jess returns home, he finds his family worried, his mother in tears.
His older sister Brenda breaks the news: Leslie is dead. His father explains that she had been swinging on the rope to Terabithia when it broke. She fell, struck her head, and drowned in the creek. They're always together, so the family thought that Jess had been killed, too.
Disbelieving them at first, the terrible realization hits Jess like a punch in the stomach and he takes off, as if by running, he could keep Leslie alive. His father brings him home. Jess experiences all the stages of the bereaved: denial, anger, fear, guilt, and sorrow.
He and his parents go to a gathering at the Burkes' house to pay respects. The experience is just unreal to him. Afterward, Jess struggles with his overwhelming grief. He's shocked when he receives support from the last person he ever expected - Mrs. Myers, who offers him her condolences, tells him that Leslie was her favorite student, and that he shouldn't be afraid to grieve. She's still grieving for her late husband.
The only way Jess can cope with his loss is to use all the inner strength that Leslie had given him. He decides to repay her for her kindness by passing it along. He builds a bridge to Terabithia and brings his neglected little sister May Belle into the kingdom, making her the new queen.
Katherine Paterson's powerful, emotional story won the Newbery Award the year it was published. Nearly 50 years later, it continues to touch the hearts and minds of new generations of readers. Adults who read the book as children are still brought to tears by the ending. You know what's coming, but it still hits you like a train.
Surprisingly, Bridge To Terabithia holds the distinction of being the most banned and challenged children's book of all time, as it often appears on teachers' assigned reading lists for classroom study.
The novel still raises the ire of disgruntled parents and conservative groups who complain about its bleakness, stark realism, themes of death and grief, dialectic use of mildly profane language, ridiculing of authority figures, and negative depictions of Christians and Christianity.
Religious themes are handled in an honest, realistic way. Due to the religious dogma he was raised to believe in, Jess's faith is no comfort to him at all in his greatest time of need; he's terrified that God will send Leslie Burke to Hell for being a nonbeliever. His father assures him otherwise, telling him that "God ain't gonna send any little girls to Hell." Jess still worries about Leslie's soul.
What makes the ending even more powerful is understanding where it came from. First, Katherine Paterson had been diagnosed with cancer. Then, while dealing with fears for her mortality and what will become of her children if she dies, a worse tragedy strikes.
Lisa Hill, her son David's best and only friend, a bright, imaginative, and kindhearted little girl, is struck by lightning and killed, her young life snuffed out by a random act of God. This turned Katherine's fears and simmering discontent with religion into a seething rage against God. She would later reconcile with her faith.
Fortunately, after undergoing surgery to remove a tumor, Katherine was given the best possible prognosis: her cancer was caught early and hadn't spread. Now 93, she's still with us. But Lisa Hill is not, and Katherine's anger at that can be seen through Jess Aarons.
Though he still believes in the Bible to the point that he fears for Leslie Burke's soul, he doesn't pray for her. He doesn't pray at all. His acceptance of his loss and his path to healing have absolutely nothing to do with reaffirming his faith or turning to it in any way.
Instead, the author gives us a beautiful and potent existentialist ending. The literal bridge to Terabithia that Jess builds, "which might look to someone with no magic in him like a few planks across a nearly dry gully," is a powerful multi layered metaphor.
It's a bridge from one part of Jess's life to another; he has experienced the worst thing that ever happened to him and survived. He's still hurting but ready to cross the bridge and move on. Leslie will always be with him, as he finally understands the precious gift she gave him:
It was Leslie who had taken him from the cow pasture into Terabithia and turned him into a king. He had thought that was it. Wasn't king the best you could be? Now it occurred to him that perhaps Terabithia was like a castle where you came to be knighted. After you stayed for a while and grew strong you had to move on. For hadn't Leslie, even in Terabithia, tried to push back the walls of his mind and make him see beyond to the shining world - huge and terrible and beautiful and very fragile? (Handle with care - everything - even the predators.)
Now it was time for him to move out. She wasn't there, so he must go for both of them. It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.
As for the terrors ahead - for he did not fool himself that they were all behind him - well, you just have to stand up to your fear and not let it squeeze you white. Right, Leslie?
Right.
Jess has crossed another bridge. He is no longer Leslie's king - he is now her apostle. He will keep her gospel of imagination, empathy, and kindness, and spread it. In the face of the cruel, random, and senseless tragedy that took her from him, he found meaning in her life and his own. His broken heart will heal, and he'll move on.
A less discussed yet amazing aspect of this nearly 50-year-old novel is its prescient and progressive attitude toward gender nonconformity. The main characters even have androgynous names.
Jess Aarons, the male lead, is an introverted, sensitive, artistic boy with no interest in traditional male pastimes. This alienates him from the other kids and causes both his parents to fear for his masculinity, especially his cold and distant father.
David Paterson, Katherine's son and the inspiration for Jess, was also an introverted, sensitive boy, and had a strained relationship with his own father, a Presbyterian minister. Jess wants to be a professional artist, David grew up to be a playwright and screenwriter.
Bridge To Terabithia has been adapted into other media over the years. The first adaptation was an audio dramatization released by Newbery Award Records in 1979. Sold only to schools as a study aid, this full cast dramatization is excellent, with great voice acting, music, and sound effects.
I got my copy of the record on eBay. The 50-minute recording would be edited down to almost half its length and used as the soundtrack for a 1981 Bridge To Terabithia filmstrip set, which I also have.
There were two unabridged audiobook releases of Bridge To Terabithia. The first, released by Recorded Books in 1996, is read by actor Tom Stechschulte, who gives one of the best audiobook performances I've ever heard, his rich baritone voice resonating the power of the story.
The second audiobook, released in 2004 by Harper Children's Audio, features a flat and uninspired reading by actor Robert Sean Leonard. The 2007 movie tie-in re-release of this audiobook features a bonus interview with Katherine and David Paterson - the only reason to buy it.
In 1996, Katherine Paterson co-wrote a musical stage play adaptation of Bridge To Terabithia which her son David would produce and stage at elementary schools. The play would also be performed around the world in various languages. I have a copy of the play script, which is sold by its publisher - Samuel French, Inc., America's largest publisher of plays.
The musical soundtrack appears on the cassette-only release, Bridge To Terabithia and Other Musicals, which includes the musical soundtracks for two other plays based on novels by Katherine Paterson: The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks and The Great Gilly Hopkins.
I ordered my copy of the cassette from the only store that sold it - a children's bookstore in New York City called Books of Wonder. The Bridge To Terabithia songs are performed by two adult singers who sing all the parts, and the only musical instrument on the album is a piano.
A few other adult singers appear on the soundtracks of The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks and The Great Gilly Hopkins. The cassette-only release is a low-budget production, but the music and lyrics are pretty good.
The highlight of the album is the spoken word narration on the Bridge To Terabithia soundtrack, which is performed by Katherine Paterson. Live performances of the musical play can be found on YouTube.
Bridge To Terabithia was filmed twice. It was first adapted in 1985 as an episode of the series Wonderworks - a zero-budget, horribly written, poorly acted episode of a PBS TV series that usually produced quality adaptations of children's literature.
David Paterson described it as being "the crazy cousin that nobody talks about... no one on our side was either involved with it or happy with the final product."
TV writer and producer Nancy Sackett, who penned the teleplay for the episode, finally responded to all the criticism of her adaptation, copping out by claiming that it was the best she could do given the production's miniscule budget and 60-minute running time.
Fans of the book, myself included, believed that it would never be adapted as a quality film because of its controversial nature. However, in 2007, Disney's Walden Media division produced a feature film version of Bridge To Terabithia.
With David Paterson serving as producer and co-writer, the movie, though far from perfect given all the changes demanded by the studio, turned out to be a basically faithful adaptation that beautifully captured the emotion of the story. It was lovingly directed by animator Gabor Csupo in his first live-action film.
The movie featured excellent performances by young leads Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb as Jess Aarons and Leslie Burke. They're backed by a stellar supporting cast, including Robert Patrick as Mr. Aarons and Zooey Deschanel as Miss Edmunds.
Although the "Disneyfied" screenplay tones down (the book is much darker) and modernizes the story and omits or waters down the most controversial elements of the novel, (Disney even wanted an alternate ending where Leslie Burke doesn't die, which David Paterson fought against and won) the movie still ignited a firestorm of controversy due to deceitful marketing practices over which the filmmakers had no control.
Not knowing how to market a film where one of the main child characters dies, but hoping to attract a large audience, Disney falsely advertised it as a fantasy similar to The Chronicles Of Narnia. Parents and children unfamiliar with the book went to the movie expecting to see what was advertised.
Instead, they saw a deep and sad story that really had little to do with fantasy. Children were traumatized and news outlets reported many stories of angry parents complaining about the Disney movie that had their kids crying uncontrollably in the theater and all the way home.
The marketing also drove away fans of the book (like me) who believed that the story they loved so much had been butchered yet again. I didn't see the movie until it was released on DVD. I wish I had seen it on the big screen.
The Bridge To Terabithia movie is currently available on DVD, Blu-Ray, and streaming services. I wholeheartedly recommend that you see it - after you read the book, a masterpiece of contemporary children's literature.
It's unlikely that we'll see another film adaptation of Bridge To Terabithia. Disney didn't buy one-time film rights to the novel - they bought all adaptation rights. Anyone wishing to adapt the book in any format would have to get Disney's approval and pay them a licensing fee.
(Samuel French, Inc. owns the script, production, and performance rights for the 1996 musical play.)
I would love to see another film adaptation of Bridge To Terabithia - one set in the proper time, closer to the tone of the book, and more faithful to its progressive roots. The story would also work as an anime or graphic novel.
In 2017, a 40th Anniversary Special Edition of Bridge To Terabithia was released, featuring a foreword by novelist Kate DiCamillo, an author's note on the book's 40th anniversary, and the complete text of Katherine Paterson's Newbery Award acceptance speech.
Never afraid to tackle difficult subjects, Katherine Paterson followed Bridge To Terabithia with The Great Gilly Hopkins (1979), another controversial, Newbery Award winning novel. It was inspired by the author's experiences as a foster parent for troubled children.
Quote Of The Day
"Read for fun, read for information, read in order to understand yourself and other people with quite different ideas. Learn about the world beyond your door. Learn to be compassionate and grow in wisdom. Books can help us in all these ways."
- Katherine Paterson
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a 60-minute interview with Katherine Paterson, recorded as part of the Kennedy Center Performing Arts Series in 2011. Enjoy!
