There are only two books that have made me cry. Granted, I was in sixth grade when I read this for the first time. But like most books I review on Goodreads, I sat down to read this again before posting my review. My sentiments about Bridge to Terabithia haven't changed much.

I don't remember a lot from my pre-teen years. Little fragments crop up from time to time when I see an old commercial on Youtube or I play an 8-bit classic on my Wii. This book I remember. And as I re-read it I started recalling the circumstances that surrounded my initial reading of this book. I remember the girl I had a crush on who sat behind me in class. I remember growing my hair out and listening to Iron Maiden, experimenting with image, stripping away those last external indicators of child-like innocence and trying to be more "grown up." Then I remember crying in my closet near the end of this book.

Years later I have a career, a daughter, a wife. I still listen to Iron Maiden, but I don't wear the oversized metal shirts like I used to, and my hair is cut short most of the time. I don't have to try to be an adult anymore. What I was pushing back then I reflect on as an inevitable development now. Now I find myself retracing my steps, trying to go back to that time in my life, but like Rita Dove observes in her poem "Driving Through," it isn't always as easy or clear cut as we hope it to be. I'm a different person now, at least that's what I told myself when I started reading this book again a few years ago. How strange that sometimes drawing a connection between the person we were and the person we become happens inadvertently, at the most unexpected moments, when we spend half of our lives trying so hard to move forward and half of lives trying so hard to go back.

So there I sat, more than a decade later, with the same emotional reaction I had as a child telling me to stop reading, and nostalgia and the comforting memory of childhood ebbing me forward.