★★★★☆ Reading Bridge to Terabithia at 67

Bridge to Terabithia

Katherine Paterson

This 40th anniversary edition of Bridge to Terabithia begins with a Foreword by Kate DiCamillo, which she begins with this story:

I read Bridge to Terabithia for the first time when I was thirty years old...
I recommended Bridge to Terabithia to my best friend’s son, Luke Bailey, when he was nine years old. This was sixteen years ago. Luke finished the book and came out of his room and went into the kitchen and stood in front of his mother. He was sobbing. The front of his shirt was wet. He said, “I will never, ever forgive Aunt Kate.”

I won't pretend that this story did not give me pause. I am 67 years old, I love children's books, and I make a practice of snapping up the Newbery medalist and honor books every year. Yet somehow I had never read this classic. But still, knowing that something horrible was going to happen, I looked forward with fear to encountering it. (Let's be fair, DiCamillo is not giving away any secrets here. Even the publisher's blurb says, "One morning, Leslie goes to Terabithia without Jess and a tragedy occurs.")

So, thirty years old, nine years old, 67 years old -- how does the experience change? At 67, I have encountered death in children's books over and over -- from A Little Princess, Charlotte's Web, and The Little Prince to When You Trap a Tiger, Clap When You Land, Red, White, and Whole, and Iveliz Explains It All. The last four are all books I've read fairly recently, and include three Newbery winners. I think I was younger than DiCamillo's friend Luke Bailey the first time I encountered tragedy in a kid's book, and six decades have passed since then.

The surprise is that those sixty years make so little difference. I have not become numb. My eyes still water when it happens. I don't think I ever reacted the way Luke did. I think I intuitively understood the idea of catharsis even at the age of seven. It was hard, but I knew that this was a Good Story, and I was eager to read more like it. The difference is that I can do little mental tricks like the one I'm doing now, where I split myself into the Me-who-is-reading-Bridge-To-Terabithia, and Me-who-is-observing-Me-who-is-reading. I have even read Aristotle and Plato and know more about the classical roots of catharsis (utterly useless, this is).

Katherine Paterson' Bridge to Terabithia is neither the first nor the last in a long tradition of telling children stories about death and grief. It is a distinguished member of the group and I recommend it.

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