Bridge to Terabithia

Bridge to Terabithia is a children's novel by the American author Katherine Paterson. It was originally published in 1977 by Thomas Crowell and won a Newbery Medal the following year. The two of them are ten and in the fifth grade, and the friendship is Jesse's first with someone who reads and imagines the way he does.

The story begins with an ordinary rivalry. Jesse Aarons loses a footrace to his new neighbour Leslie Burke, and the friendship that follows changes him: he is described as fearful and angry at the start and as becoming braver and less frustrated after meeting her. The two invent a country called Terabithia, which Leslie names, and it exists only in their play.

Leslie's death during a storm, while she is trying to reach the hideaway, is the event the novel is known for, and the book spends its final movement on Jesse's grief rather than on the accident. Paterson drew on her own experience for the story. The final movement stays with Jesse rather than with the accident, and the book's refusal to explain the death is part of why its ending is so often discussed.