Bridge to Terabithia

I knew this was going to leave me in pieces but I read it anyway. I saw the film a few years ago (with my son who was about 6 at the time and left traumatised by the experience - nice parenting, Olly), so I knew the ending, but still....
It’s a beautifully written tale of childhood friendship and imagination that I can’t find a single fault with. The book manages to be very readable without ever patronising its target audience. It’s also thrilling and fun, but yeah, that ending....
*stares into the middle distance* ( )

Classic, you need to read this, it is whimsical with tragedy. ( )

This is a story set in a rural area in the...1960s (?), about a 10-year-old boy who liked to draw, liked music, liked stories....But because of his working class family background, no one in his family understood him, and his parents...um...they didn't parent him very appropriately. Then an upper-middle class family moved in next door, and the 10-year-old girl in that family became best friends with the boy. The boy felt understood, inspired, loved. Then the girl drowned in an accident. The boy grieved and gradually came to cope with her death. Vivid description and storytelling. Reading this as an adult, I kept focusing on (and questioning!) the parenting decisions of of both Jess and Leslie's parents. Why spoil Jess's two older sisters by letting them go out shopping when the family couldn't afford the spending, and when there is much help needed around the house? Why so little interest in trying to communicate with or understand Jess? (This improved significantly after Jess began grieving for the girl's death, though.) Why so little interest in learning about and understanding Leslie's difficulties to socialize at school, when her parents had moved to the rural area for Leslie's sake in the first place? Why allow Jess and Leslie to wander away from the house with no supervision? Why allow Leslie to go near the creek on her own when the water was running so high? The depiction of public school life is scary. It seems like an awful place where students form cliques, bullies roam, and it is dangerous to show your weakness and personal struggles in front of your community. Hopefully the public school culture has changed significantly since then.... ( )

Bridge to Terabithia is an imaginative tale that tells the story of two friends creating an enchanted Kingdom they named Terabithia. Jess and Leslie become fast friends after Leslie outruns Jess in the big race that he has been practicing for all summer. They play in the woods behind Leslie's house and invent Terabithia. The two go on many adventures in this magical land, but tragedy struck when Leslie decides to go without Jess and she falls swinging from the rope. From the help of his family and friends, Jess learns how to deal with the untimely death of his best friend. ( )

Year 5