Bridge+to+Terabithia





= **by Katherine Paterson** = = = Have you ever dreamed about leaving your problems and cares behind and escaping to a world where everything is just the way you want it? If you are like most people, you have probably dreamed about an imaginary world. Maybe you have even created one, with the help of your family or friends. Katherine Paterson’s award-winning novel //Bridge to// //Terabithia// is about an imaginary world.

The kingdom of Terabithia is the creation of two children who live in rural Virginia. Jess Aarons is a shy boy who feels that his family and friends do not understand him. Leslie Burke has just moved to the rural community with her parents and feels like an outsider. Together they make a hideaway in the woods across a creek from Leslie’s home. There they imagine lives different from the ones they lead at school and with their families. But Terabithia is not as safe and secure as it seems. The children’s everyday problems do not stop at the castle walls, and real life soon invades the imaginary kingdom. Katherine Paterson’s novel is rich in ideas. As you read the novel, think about how the power of imagination helps Jess and Leslie see beyond everyday life. Think also about why Jess and Leslie reach out to each other for understanding and how people develop the courage to face everyday challenges, both large and small.





THE TIME AND PLACE // Bridge to Terabithia // takes place in rural Virginia, not far from Washington, D.C., and its suburbs. The fictional town of Lark Creek may be much like the small town where Katherine Paterson taught elementary school in the 1950s. The time of the novel is the 1970s, sometimes called the decade of disillusion because of the setbacks and the problems the nation was facing. During the 1970s, the United States signed a peace treaty with the North Vietnamese government, ending our country’s involvement in the Vietnam War, a conflict that was opposed by many U.S. citizens. Dissatisfaction with their leaders’ determination to fight this war was one of the factors that was thought to cause many young Americans to join the “counterculture.” The counterculture rebelled against many of the values generally supported by the middle class. Young people chose clothing that was very different from that worn by business people and community leaders. They developed their own distinctive music, which was foreign to the ears of the older generation, and they protested, or openly disagreed with, the actions of persons who controlled government agencies and big corporations. In this novel, the people of a rural community outside the nation’s capital are suspicious of the city family that moves into a run-down farmhouse nearby, calling them hippies. The term //hippies// refers to the young people of the late 1960s and early1970s who disregarded the fashions of the middle class. Typically, they wore their hair long and wore unconventional clothes. The rural community to which the urbanfamily moves is located within the large region known as Appalachia. Appalachia is the region in the eastern United States comprising the Appalachian Mountains from south central New York to central Alabama.It includes, therefore, parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. The Appalachian range is the oldest mountain system in the United States, older than the large mountain ranges in the West.

INTRODUCING THE NOVEL Terabithia, the imaginary kingdom that Jess and Leslie create, is based on another wellknown imaginary kingdom. You may have read some of the Narnia books by English author C. S. Lewis, starting with //The Lion, the Witch// //and the Wardrobe// and continuing for seven books to //The Last Battle.// In this popular saga, Lewis relates several children’s adventures in a magical world called Narnia, where they meet kings and queens, witches, lions, and unicorns and other fantastic creatures. If you have read any of the Narnia books, look for similarities between Narnia and the kingdom of Terabithia in this novel. What other magical kingdoms have you read about?