During this period, her young son David lost a close friend who was tragically struck by lightning. While her literary career began flourishing during the 1970s, Paterson was also faced with a number of difficult personal events, including surviving a cancerous tumor and losing her mother to cancer. She eventually began writing fiction and, nine years later, her first novel, The Sign of the Chrysanthemum, was published in 1973. How did it come about? According to Children’s Literature Review Paterson’s career started in this way: “In 1964 Paterson began her professional writing career formulating curricula for school systems. Safe until an unforeseen tragedy forces Jess to reign in Terabithia alone, and both worlds are forever changed.” Here, Leslie and Jess rule supreme among the oaks and evergreens, safe from the bullies and ridicule of the mundane world. The friendship between the two grows as Jess guides the city girl through the pitfalls of life in their small, rural town, and Leslie draws him into the world of imaginations world of magic and ceremony called Terabithia. Then, unexpectedly, Jess finds himself sticking up for Leslie, for the girl who breaks rules and wins races.

But his victory was stolen by a newcomer, by a girl, one who didn’t even know enough to stay on the girls’ side of the playground. The synopsis from the publisher reads, “All summer, Jess pushed himself to be the fastest boy in the fifth grade, and when the year’s first school-yard race was run, he was going to win. Our former National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature appears yet again on this list, and her Terabithia (which did not crack the Top Ten last time around) sits proudly here. We need practice with loss, rehearsal for grieving, just as we need preparation for decision making.” – Katherine Paterson. “The time a child needs a book about life’s dark passages is before he or she has had to experience them. I never knew before Bridge to Terabithia that a story could make you care so much about people who don’t actually exist. I still remember that punch-in-the-stomach shock and trying-not-to-cry throat ache I felt when she read the ending. I was so upset that I refused to re-read the book for years.

This was the first time I read a book that reflected real life, where death is sudden, pointless, and gut-wrenching. I had read many other books where characters died, but it was always for a “good” or “glorious” reason. #10 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (1977)

Bridge to terabithia novel