# of Words: 339

Bridge to Terabithia is one of the very classic books you could ever read about friendship, imagination, and reduction. And, with each of these components, the book won Katherine Paterson her very first Newbery Medal at 1978 (she won another for Jacob Have I Loved at 1981). However, like many other excellent children's books, it has come under controversial fire.

It happens to deal with some pretty hard subject matter, such as passing and religion (by way of example, some critics think Leslie's not a fantastic role model because she doesn't attend church), and it doesn't help that a few of the characters do some moderate swearing (origin).

But, it seems as though guards such as the book are much more passionate than criticisms.

"[...] inducing Bridge to Terabithia to be deducted from the literary bill of fare to young adults could do a great deal more than simply enable the censors to prohibit a high quality novel. It can sound a frighteningly clear clarion call to get a full-scale assault on imaginative literature during U.S. programs of research." (origin)

Whether you applaud Paterson for providing a voice to youth loss and despair or perhaps not, what some folks don't know is that Bridge to Terabithia is motivated by the true story of the writer's son and his best buddy. Paterson found herself not able to describe the reduction to her son and ended up writing Bridge to Terabithia. At a Q&A on her site, she states, "I wrote the book to attempt to make sense from a catastrophe that seemed senseless" (origin).

Unsurprisingly, over the decades Paterson has received plenty of fan mail that question the rather unconventional decision to write about the death of a principal character. In a 2005 interview, Paterson admitted, "When kids ask me why she had to die, I need to weep, because it's a question for which I don't have any answer" (origin). Both in life and in fiction, it seems, the reduction of a buddy like that can not be clarified or undone.

Related Papers

Henry IV, Part 1 William Shakespeare

Henry IV Part 1 is the story of Prince Hal (the future King Henry V of England), a fifteenth century crazy child who carouses with offenders and commoners, helps his loser chums rob his father's treasury, and spends all his time at seedy bars. This, needless to say, all takes place before Prince Hal's glorious "reformation," when he transforms himself out of a total disgrace into a noble leader, that will help set down a rebel uprising that threatens his father's reign, also kills the man whose......Read More

Cloud 9 Caryl Churchill

We may as well tell you: Cloud 9 is the most bizarre, most uptight play we have ever read. Seriously, who may even stay awake through a play that concerns itself with a massive incestuous orgy at the center of a London park, a game of hide-and-seek in Victorian Colonial Africa which segues into adultery and pedophilia, masturbating grandmothers, a fairly slick necrophilia-themed pickup lineup, along with a sexually frustrated ghost who wishes to have an orgy... with his lesbian sister. What is......Read More

Arcadia Tom Stoppard

The wide range of topics in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia has made it a popular for faculty freshman-year read-alongs, as a book which, ideally, may appeal to anyone from emo poets to science nerds. Early reviewers of Arcadia's initial run remarked that Tom Stoppard, like the Tin Man at The Wizard of Oz, had at long last discovered his heart. After almost three decades of plays that a saw more as intellectual exercises compared to heartfelt drama (Stoppard's first success was with Rosencrantz and......Read More

Related Topics