One of my all-time favorite books is Bridge to Terabithia by Kathleen Paterson. It's a Newberry Award-winning children's novel that, for me, ranks among the top ten books everyone, kids and adults alike, must read. I've recommended it countless of times and, just last year, I gave two of my graduate school classmates a previously-owned copy of the book on their birthdays. It was one of those classmates who first informed me via text that he had just seen the trailer of Bridge to Terabithia, the movie.
A few days later, I caught the trailer myself, and as soon as I saw the pixie-faced girl swing across a creek on a rope, I was beside myself in excitement. It soon became apprehension, though, when I saw clips of what is definitely not in the book: vivid images of the magical land Terabithia. Producer Walden Media, after all, is best known for the film version of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Still, I crossed my fingers and wished they hadn't turned this realistic novel into a fantasy.
This week, I happily found out they hadn't. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the fact that the screenplay was co-written by David Paterson, son of the author, and on whose childhood experience the novel was based.
Directed by Gabor Csupo, Bridge to Terabithia stars three talented relative newcomers Josh Hutcherson (from Zathura: A Space Adventure and Little Manhattan) as Jesse Aarons, Jr., Anna Sophia Robb (last seen in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as Leslie Burke, and Bailee Madison (who was in last year's Lonely Hearts, with John Travolta and Salma Hayek) as May Belle Aarons.
It tells the simple and straightforward story of two neighbors, a young boy and a young girl, both talented and artistic but lonely and feeling out-of-place, who strike up a friendship and create an after-school fantasy world of their own. In this fantasy world, which the more imaginative Leslie has named Terabithia, they battle the fantasy versions of their real-life terrors. For instance, the school bully Janice Avery is turned into a troll in the land where Jesse and Leslie are King and Queen.
Leslie's friendship gives Jesse the courage to be more than what he thought he could be, and Jesse's friendship gives Leslie, an only child with busy parents, the companionship she badly craves. In the end, it is the power of this friendship that gives Jesse the strength to pass its ultimate test. And it is with the magic of this fictional friendship that Bridge to Terabithia leaves its imprint in the viewers' hearts.
I'm glad that the movie version doesn't veer away from the book in terms of impact and emotion, and yet manages to expand on it for today's young viewers. The fantasy sequences of which I was initially apprehensive served it well, especially towards the end, when Jesse brings his precocious little sister May Belle to Terabithia.
Bridge to Terabithia is a story of artists and their imagination, of how big brothers become big brothers, and how a person whose life has been touched turns into a person who wants to touch somebody else's life. But the real beauty of the film-and the book-is that it shows how powerfully friendship can transform children. More specifically, it shows how, blessed with the right friends who see more in us than we can see in ourselves, friends who push us forward and believe in us even when we doubt ourselves, we're forever stronger and more beautiful, no matter how brief the friendship.
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