Bridge to Terabithia

by Katherine Paterson

Bridge to Terabithia takes us by the hand and leads us into a room that we have never entered before. After we read this story, we cannot unknow what we now know. We are devastated, emotionally rent. But still: we feel held, loved, seen. Someone trusted us enough to tell us the truth; and because of that, the room is golden, brimful of light.

He thought later how peculiar it was that here was probably the biggest thing in his life, and he had shrugged it off as nothing.

seemed to him that he had been thought too big for that since the day he was born.

He nodded and smiled again. She smiled back. He felt there in the teachers’ room that it was the beginning of a new season in his life, and he chose deliberately to make it so.

Leslie named their secret land “Terabithia,” and she loaned Jess all of her books about Narnia, so he would know how things went in a magic kingdom—how the animals and the trees must be protected and how a ruler must behave.

Leslie was more than his friend. She was his other, more exciting self—his way to Terabithia and all the worlds beyond.

Terabithia was still just for the two of them.

Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.

I’m really sorry, Leslie. He took off his jacket and sneakers, and crawled under the covers. I was dumb not to think of asking.

Why wasn’t Leslie here to help him out of this? Why didn’t she come running in and make everyone laugh again? You think it’s so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well, it ain’t.

She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there—like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.

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.