Bridge to Terabithia
Katherine Paterson
Originally published in 1977,
winner of the 1978 Newbery Medal
Harper Teen, 2004
$6.99, Paperback
978-0060734015
April 30th, 2012
Based on the book by Katherine
Paterson, Directed by Gabor Csupo
Walt Disney/Walden Media, 2007
Rated PG
April 30th, 2012
Genre: Realistic
Age: 10+
Description: Jesse Aarons, the only boy in a family of five
children, lives in rural southwest Virginia.
His mother favors his sisters, while his father is busy with work and doesn’t
get to spend much time with the family. May Belle, the second youngest sister,
adores and admires Jess. Leslie Burke is an only child who moves to the area. Jess
and Leslie soon become close friends. He shares his secret love of drawing with
her, and she shares with Jess her love of fantasy stories. The two children
create an imaginary kingdom, Terabithia, in the woods near their homes,
accessible only by a rope swing over a creek. For Christmas, Leslie gives Jess
some paints and Jess gets her a puppy. Jess has a crush on his young music
teacher, Miss Edmunds. One day he is asked to accompany Miss Edmunds to the
National Gallery of Art. While he’s gone, Leslie goes to Terabithia alone. The
rope breaks as she is swinging over the rain-swollen creek and Leslie drowns. Jess
is grief stricken and eventually moves on by remembering the strength and
courage Leslie gave him. To remember her, he builds a bridge across the creek
and takes May Belle there to make her the new Princess of Terabithia.
Opinion: When Katherine Paterson published her Newbery
award-wining novel Bridge to Terabithia
in 1977, critics said children wouldn’t be able to handle a story about death.
When the movie version hit theatres nationwide in 2007, viewers were generally
pleased to see an adaptation that remained faithful to Paterson’s story, despite pressures to make huge
changes to the plot. Of course, we all know that every time a film company
decides to turn a novel into a movie there are chances that some changes,
either slight or drastic, will occur. Bridge
to Terabithia is no different. Remaining faithful to Paterson’s original story, there are some
major similarities and differences for readers and viewers to observe. These
include some similarities of plot and some updating to the original story’s
setting and characterization and the technical aspects of computer generated
imagery to bring Terabithia to life.
The main plot of
the movie version stays faithful to the book mainly due in part to the
screenplay being written by David Paterson, Katherine Paterson’s son, and since
the story was based on something that happened to him as a child it was
personally important to him so he did not want to see the book turned into a
movie version that didn’t even resemble the original story. In 1974, Lisa Hill,
a close friend of David’s, was killed when she was struck by lightning. In an
interview David Paterson said, “If you can believe this I did meet with some
companies that asked if I could just ‘hurt’ Leslie a little bit—put her in a
light coma and then bring her out” (Oleck, 2007, para. 2). The film’s director,
Gabor Csupo, fell in love with the story and wanted to take the emotion he saw
in the book and successfully translate it to the movie version. Thus, the main
similarity between the book and the movie is the representation of Jess and
Leslie’s friendship and how Leslie’s death changes Jess’s life.
One of the first
differences in the film is the setting of the story. In Paterson’s novel, the original story takes
place in the time she wrote it—the 1970s. The movie version has been set
forward to more modern times. For example, in the book the narrator describes
Lark Creek Elementary as being “short on everything”. In the movie version, the
school still looks rural, but the playground is a huge, lovely grass field. In
the schoolroom there are many references made to things that didn’t exist in a
1970s room, such as modern computers. Mrs. Myers even tells her students that
no electronic devices are allowed in class and that nobody better “download”
their papers from the Internet.
A second
difference between the book and the film versions involves some minor changes
in characterization. One thing most readers will notice automatically is that
the physical appearance of Jess and Leslie has been switched. In the book, Jess
has “straw-colored hair” while Leslie has “jaggedy brown hair cut close” to her
face. In the movie, the children’s hair colors are switched. Also related to
the appearance of the characters, Jess, in the book, has a hard time even
identifying Leslie’s gender, calling her an “it” at first. In Csupo’s movie,
Leslie is clearly a girl from first glance with her bright blonde hair and
colorful wardrobe. The children’s clothing also gets an update from a plain
1970s style to a more modern 1990s look. On the first day of school, Paterson describes Leslie
as appearing “dressed in the faded cutoffs and the blue undershirt,” which
shocks the rest of the class sitting there “dressed in their spring Sunday
best”. In the movie, Jess wears modern clothes for school, and Leslie is decked
out in bright colors, multiple layers, elbow pads, and a multitude of bracelets
and other jewelry.
Unfortunately, a
third major difference between the book and the movie versions, which came from
a conflict between Paterson and Csupo’s visions and the studio’s vision for the
film, lies behind adding CGI to bring to life the imaginary world Jess and
Leslie create in Terabithia. Weta Digital conceived the special effects,
creating CG creatures and inserting them into the film. Despite the limited
amount of CGI actually produced for the film, the effect these added shots had
on the press releases prior to the movie’s opening was enormous. While
Katherine Paterson left most of the details of Terabithia to the reader's
imagination, the film’s media efforts presented its version of Terabithia as
the flashy main attraction to the movie. Both Paterson and Csupo believe that
the movie’s trailer didn’t represent to potential viewers the real depth of the
movie’s plot. The filmmakers even distanced themselves from the advertising
campaign saying that the advertising was deliberately misleading and made the
film seem to be about or occur solely in a fantasy world. Overall, the added
CGI effects to the movie was a necessary step to make the world of Terabithia
come alive in front of a movie audiences’ eyes. It was an acceptable change to
the movie because something visual needed to be put on the screen unlike the
Terabithia of the book which could be whatever a reader’s imagination
envisioned it to be.
Despite some CGI
effects causing the marketing of the film to appear to be a full-on fantasy
story and some slight updates in setting and changes in characterization, the
book and film version do have a number of elements that stay faithful to one
another. In both versions, Jess is apprehensive at first to Leslie’s attempts
at friendship. He is angry at her for winning the relay race, but then he warms
up to her when he feels bad that the class teases her for not owning a
television. They are both teased by Janice Avery, an eighth grader who is
beaten by her father, and later turns out to be a possible friend. Other plot
similarities between book and movie include such little things as Jess giving
Leslie her dog Prince Terrien, the painting of the “Golden Room”, Leslie going
to church with the Aarons family, Miss Edmund taking Jess to the museum, and
Leslie’s subsequent death. All of these little similarities move the movie’s
plot to its resolution—Jess’s reaction to and acceptance of Leslie’s
death—which almost mirrors the book’s plot perfectly.
In both the book
and the movie, Jess’s first reaction to Leslie’s death is flat out
denial—Leslie can’t drown. Jess runs away to the woods, and in both versions is
brought home by his father. The next morning he acts as if nothing happened
because he is still in denial. The family goes to Leslie’s wake where a tender
moment is shared between Mr. Burke and Jess. One of the last scenes that
translated well from book to movie was Jess’s decision to honor Leslie’s memory
by building a bridge to Terabithia. It’s moments like these that are touching
for both fans of the book to see acted out and for viewers enjoying the film
that have no prior knowledge of the story.
Luckily, for most
fans of the original Bridge to Terabithia
novel, the film version will be a future favorite as well. Fans of the book
will be forever grateful that Paterson’s
son, David, co-wrote the screenplay while remaining faithful to his mother’s
original novel. Despite some modern touches to the setting and characterization
and a few minor CGI effects to bring the imagination of Terabithia to life, the
movie is an accurate portrayal of the book’s plot due to the fact that the
screenwriter and the director believed in the power of Paterson’s original
story and didn’t want to change a bit of its powerful message in the transition
of the plot from printed page to silver screen.
Oleck, J. (2007). “Bridge to Terabithia” hits the big screen. School Library Journal, 53(2), 20. Retrieved from Wilson Web.
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