Bridge to Terabithia

Christmas at Jess' house is chaotic, as everything else there seems to be. Ellie and Brenda both have boyfriends this year, and there is much haggling in the house over finding the money to buy...

For Jess and Leslie, Terabithia is a secret and magical place where they can express their dreams and expose their inner pain. It is a place where they can achieve their own hearts' desires without...

Jessie is the middle child and the only boy in his family, "smashed between four sisters...the older two had despised (him) ever since (he) stopped letting them dress (him) up and wheel (him)...

This is a great question, because the text offers a few possibilities that explain why Jess doesn't invite Leslie to go along with Miss Edmunds. I think one reason is simple, polite etiquette....

Point: Jesse and his father do not have much of a relationship, but the relationship that they do have is not terrible. I don't want to make it seem like the relationship is dangerous,...

I'm going to start this answer with a short anecdote from my own life. When I was in high school, I had two friends suffer tragic accidents. Nobody died, but one friend got hit by a drunk driver...

There are several important events in Bridge to Terabithia. Jess Aarons and Leslie Burke meet and become friends. They build a fantasyland across the creek in the woods that they call Terabithia,...

The answer to this question can be found in the final paragraph of chapter seven. Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it...

Jess was afraid to show his drawings to his dad, because his dad did not approve of his hobby. As we learn in chapter 2: He would like to show his drawings to his dad, but he didn't dare. When he...

Terabithia is the magic land that Leslie and Jess create in the woods, a few yards from the dry creek bed that separates the farmland from the forest near their rural homes. The children, who are...

Jess likes to draw "animals, mostly". The animals he draws are generally not realistic, "not regular animals like Miss Bessie or the chickens, but crazy animals with problems - for some reason he...

Jess's father reacted angrily when his son told him that he wanted to be an artist. Jess had only been in the first grade and "he had told his dad that he wanted to be an artist when he grew up"....

Jess loves May Belle dearly and feels a strong sense of connection to her. As her big brother (in fact, her only brother) he is eager to protect May Belle, and although he sometimes feels annoyed...

As Chapter 1 begins, we learn that Jesse likes to dress in overalls without a shirt underneath when he's going running, so we know he dresses a little on the nerdy side, but that's probably just...

This line is spoken by the character Leslie in the movie based on the novel Bridge to Terabithia, but it's not actually in the book. When a book gets adapted into a movie, writers often make a lot...

In the book, Bridge to Terabithia, chapter nine is called “The Evil Spell” because it is raining so much, Leslie thinks an “evil being” has cast a spell on their make-believe kingdom. This chapter...

Chapter 10 describes the perfect day of Jess because that is the day he gets to visit an art gallery for the first time, and what is more, he gets to visit it with his favourite teacher that he is...

The answer to this question can be found at the end of chapter 1. Jess is picking beans when May Belle comes to him and tells him that there are some new people "moving into the Old Perkins place."...

Jess is at his wits end trying to figure out what to give Leslie, and he is very hampered by the fact that he has next to zero money to buy any kind of present for her. Jess eventually lucks out...

The relationship between Jesse Aarons and his father can reasonably be described as not very close. There are a number of reasons for this. First and foremost, Mr. Aarons's job prevents him from...

Jesse and Lesley are both outcasts at school—Jesse because he is an artist, which is seen as a feminine pursuit, and Lesley because she is the new girl who dresses strangely and outran all the boys...

Jess and Leslie's first encounter with Janice Avery is on the school bus, where she bullies Jess and Leslie into giving up their seats. Jess says he's not scared of the “cow” but isn't able to...

When Leslie and her dad first start working on renovations to their house, Jesse feels awkward and uncomfortable around Bill (Leslie's dad, otherwise known as Mr. Burke) and even feels a kind of...

Ellie and Brenda won't wear new clothes to church because their father got laid off. The Aarons family stopped regularly attending church after their mother got into a fight with the preacher. For...

To her great surprise, Leslie finds Janice Avery, the well-known bully, crying in the bathroom. Janice's father beats her, and when Janice finally confided this sad truth in her friends Wilma and...

There are many forms of literary devices, and almost anything you point out about the way something is written could be a literary device of some kind. The main literary devices are: metaphor,...

In this novel, Jess feels like he has to be the fastest runner for two main reasons: to make his father proud and to make a name for himself at school. At the beginning of the story, we learn that...

Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia has an ending that shows us that even in the darkest times, not all hope is lost. Over the course of the book, fifth-graders Jess and Leslie become best...

Jess and Leslie are both a little bit of social outcasts. It's not that people openly despise Jess or Leslie, but people view them as odd. For example, Jess isn't the stereotypical "jock,"...

Jess in the only male child in his family. He has four sisters: two are older than him, and two are younger than him. Readers are told already in chapter one that Jess's older sisters despise him....

A key piece of information to remember is that Terabithia is a place of escape for both Leslie and Jess. It is a physical place to escape to, and it is a place for mental and emotional escapism....

We are given the answer to this question in Chapter 10, when Miss Edmonds picks Jesse up and they drive to the art gallery together. We need to remember though that Miss Edmonds has been the only...

The answer to this question can be found in the first chapter of the book. Jess is one of the story's main characters, and readers are introduced to him when he wakes up in the early morning....

In Bridge to Terabithia, the Burkes and the Aarons experience different economic class statuses and family dynamics. The Aarons's parents are burdened with economic insecurity. They struggle to...

In the book Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, Leslie Burke is different from the other students except perhaps, Jess, who becomes her friend. She is a transfer student from a city school...

When Jess goes to Terabithia alone for the first time after Leslie's death, he finds that the creek has fallen well below the level at which it had been the last time he saw it. The rope he and...

In Bridge to Terabithia, Leslie cannot go to Terabithia on the weekends because Mr. Burke is in the process of repairing the old Perkins place and wants Leslie to be around. Mrs. Burke is busy...

Leslie and her family are different from what Jess is used to at Lark Creek. Bill and Judy Burke are both writers and a bit like hippies. Although they are very friendly, Jess feels weird that...

It is possible that there are multiple pronunciations of the word "Terabithia"; however, I have only ever heard it pronounced one way. The "ter" section of the word pronounces the vowel in a way...

In Katherine Paterson's novel, Bridge to Terabithia, I think there are several conflicts, some of which do not become as important until the later part of the story. However, the conflict that...

In chapter 2, Paterson writes that Jess feels lonely in the house because he is surrounded by females. Indeed, Jess has four sisters (Ellie, Brenda, May Belle, Joyce) and no brothers. In chapter 2,...

Jess is bored by the service because it always seemed to be the same. He tuned it out like he did his school lessons and let his mind float free. He was embarrased bythe way his sisters were...

The resolution of a story is defined as the moment when the various conflicts are resolved and the story concludes. When we think about this excellent novel, we can see that the resolution occurs...

In The Bridge to Terabithia, May Belle Aarons is the younger sister of the book's protagonist, Jesse Oliver Aarons. We learn in the first chapter that May Belle worships Jesse, which doesn't bother...

The answer to this question can be found about halfway through chapter 3. Readers are told that the students of Lark Creek Elementary School eat lunch at their desks every day. This is not ideal,...

Let us remind ourselves that foreshadowing can be defined as hints or clues that the writer gives us about what will happen later on in the novel, that often we only pick up on once we have...