There’s a shiver I get when I first pick up certain books.  Reading is almost an autonomic function for me and nothing is more inviting than the site of a new, fat book but every so often I will pick up a book, read a few pages and get the “Aha” kind of shiver.   It’s a reflex of recognition, when my eyes fix on some indefinable thing that says this book is really something special.  This is one of those books that seems to walk and talk under its own power and will become a beloved friend.  This book will transcend its time and be loved by people for centuries.  This one is a classic.  Other people have already awarded that title to The Bridge to Terabithia but I didn’t know that until I picked up the book.   The shiver told me everything.

For one thing, it’s so universal.  Every kid that ever went to school has lived in one of two camps.  Either you have been the new kid in class, like Leslie Burke or you are Jess Aarons, who has never been the new kid.  Either status has its own brand of hell.  The new kid is supposed to move from the spotlight of introduction and meld seamlessly into a group of strangers who aren’t exactly welcoming.  It’s like trying to tap dance with a load of dynamite in your arms: any missed step brings disaster.  On the other hand, the established kids have reason to fear this unwilling stranger.  It’s hard enough to find your own place in the class pecking order without some new kid waltzing in to take your place as the best singer or math whiz kid or fastest runner in class.  Why make friends with a jerk like that?   Still, that’s what Leslie and Jess do once these two opposites meet.  The rural boy and the girl with well-off writers for parents find common ground and develop the kind of friendship every lonely person needs to get through childhood.

Friendship is the central theme and gift of Terabithia; how caring for each other improves us in ways we could not master on our own.  By himself, Jess is a boy who can’t see his family members, his classmates or anyone else as an individual with personal burdens and sorrows. In all fairness, no one else seems to see Jess either, except for a kind-hearted music teacher.  Leslie’s friendship changes everything in Jess’s life.  Suddenly there is someone to plot and plan with, someone who understands and values him. With Leslie’s perspective to guide him, Jess sees the world differently.  The entire planet becomes a bigger, better place where Jess learns to master his fears.  All of this is threatened when their friendship ends prematurely.

I understand many parents have a problem with Terabithia because it deals with one of the saddest, most terrifying issues anyone has to face.  Some parents even fight to take this book off the shelves for that reason.  I understand their concern but I can’t agree with them. Because Katharine Paterson captured the pain and conflicted, surrealistic stages of early grief in this book, The Bridge to Terabithia should be read by children, hopefully before they face such an event and those feelings on their own.  Grief is a difficult process and death a fearful event.  Terabithia eases some of the fear associated with these as it teaches that friendship has a way of improving a person even after the friendship has ended.

That’s the final miracle of first friendships, how they open us up to new people who will care about us in the future.  It prepares a bridge, like the one to Terabithia, that we cross as we recognize the connection that turns a stranger becomes a friend.  It’s almost an electrical impulse, this shock of recognition.  Like the shiver when you first read a classic.