Title: Bridge to Terabithia - 128 pages
Author: Katherine Paterson
Publisher: Scholastic
This book is not approved for any use at GCS.

Plot: A fifth grade boy, Jesse, living with his family on a farm in the Eastern United States (within driving distance of Washington DC), meets a new neighbor - an only child, Leslie, his age, who moves with her parents to an adjacent farm. They are both different than their classmates; his passion is to draw; she is "liberated" (calls her professional writer parents by their first names). Together they create an imaginary kingdom "Terabithia" in the dark woods behind Jesse's farm, where they can enjoy each other's company without the peer pressure of their classmates and the stern remonstrances of Jesse's parents. Jesse and Leslie enter Terabithia by swinging across a creek bed on a rope attached to a large tree. Towards the end of "Bridge", Jesse returns from an all day trip to Washington DC with his music teacher to learn that Leslie has tragically died in his absence when the rope broke, she fell into the now-overflowing creek bed and struck her head on a rock. The balance of the story explores how Jesse deals with the death of his childhood friend.

Comments: This book is not banned from GCS because - surprise - it is not well written. The characters are reasonably well developed, the plot is intriguing, and there is sufficient adventure and action to hold the reader's attention. I would esteem Katherine Paterson a good writer. It is a shame that her considerable skills are expended on a brief novel bearing the following disqualifying flaws.

"Bridge to Terabithia" is thoroughly post-modern in its theme, tone, and character development. The operative word incessantly flung as an epithet between brothers and sisters in Jesse's family and Jesse and his classmates, and used to describe others behind their backs is "stupid". Everyone is "stupid". (Most unfortunately the sole competitor for "stupid" in Bridge is "Lord", also all-too-frequently and casually tossed out as an epithet; I personally found this most distasteful.) Consistent with this scornful tone, the classroom teacher and of course the school principal are cast as sourpuss curmudgeons whose deliberate role in life is to ruin any semblance of of fun and enjoyment. This blatant disrespect for authority continues to display itself not only through the depiction of Jesse's older sisters as chronically whining and browbeating their overworked mother into spending money the family really does not have on themselves, but casting the father as a profane man of temper, lacing his outbursts with profanity. Finally, more than once the author takes pains to remark in the course of the plot that the air in the girls' restroom at Jesse and Leslie's school is virtually unbreathable - filled with tobacco smoke.

"Bridge to Terabithia" engages the subject of religion, the Bible, and even the person of Jesus Christ. Time and space prohibit anything but a brief statement regarding the author's treatment of this subject in this review. But, suffice it to say that the conversations between Jesse, his younger sister, and Leslie, and Jesse's family's actions as they perform their annual church service duties at Easter lead only to confusion at best, and blasphemy - albeit mild - at worst. "Bridge" would be rendered somewhat more palatable had the author - as do most secular writers - left this subject out of her book.
Beyond the above prohibiting flaws, the most alarming and potentially dangerous disqualifier in "Bridge to Terabithia" is the author's treatment of a significant sub-plot, the relationship between Jesse (ten years old) and his music teacher, a virtual flower-child who weekly graces the fifth grade students with her sultry voice and guitar each Friday. Let the author speak for herself on this:

"Miss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff Ellie and Brenda (Jesse's older sisters) giggled about on the telephone. This was too real and too deep to talk about, even to think about very much. Her long swishy black hair and blue, blue eyes. She could play the guitar like a regular recording star, and she had this soft floaty voice that made Jess squish inside. Lord, she was gorgeous. And she liked him, too." (p. 12)

Miss Edmunds is further described as holding the students under "the spell of her wild beauty", and as (in most of the students' eyes) a "hippie in tight jeans with makeup all over her eyes but none on her mouth" (p. 14).

Towards the end of "Bridge", a chapter titled "The Perfect Day" describes in some rather disquieting detail a trip Jesse takes alone with Miss Edmunds to the National Art Gallery and the Smithsonian, including their very friendly small talk, and even her "hair brushing his cheek" (p. 100) and his typical wholly infatuated pre-teen reaction.

Is it too alarmist in this day of acceleratingly declining societal mores - a day in which local and national nightly newscasts with increasing frequency parade across our television screens the tragic results of pedophilia between teachers (male and female) and their vulnerable students - to warn parents about this type of writing? I think not.


Tom Chaffin
Grace Community School