Who Is Katherine Paterson's Bridge To Terabithia?

I recently read the book Bridge to Terabithia, then watched the movie. They are about a boy, named Jess, who makes friends with a new girl, named Leslie at his school and together they create a whole new world called Terabithia. The book was written by Katherine Paterson and published by Trophy Newbery. The movie was made by Disney and was directed by Gabor Csupo and starred Josh Hutcherson as Jess Aarons, AnnaSophia Robb as Leslie Burke, and Zooey Deschanel as Ms. Edmunds.

“Children deprived of words become school dropouts, dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.” (Peter S. Jennison) Censorship could easily be one of the biggest controversies around the world today. The book “Harris and Me” by Gary Paulsen, about a boy who stays with his distant cousin Harris on the family farm because his parents are a bunch of “puke drunks.” Spends the summer fighting “commie japs”, hunting mice, and tussling with the rooster Ernie. This book was banned by the ALA for nothing more than profanity. If that’s even the right term, especially for today in our society. This book was taught in my sixth grade class and I have adored it ever since, but I was baffled to find out it

If a controversial book will be read in the classroom, it is the teacher’s responsibility to prepare the student for it. The teacher must ensure that the book is age-appropriate for the student, and is appropriate for the subject matter that the teacher is covering. Reading books such as Catcher in The Rye without discussion can be more harmful than helpful to a student. The Catcher in The Rye has obscene language, violence, occult practices, and sexual references (Doyle 2010). This book should only be read by a mature age group with a

Censors typically feel as though the subject material of controversial books in the high school English curriculum is too much for teenagers to handle (Shen, 2002).

The novella, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, has been battling censorship attempts for many years, and the attempts are downright absurd. Books usually get censored for the use of explicit language, disagreement with the political or religious standpoints of a reader, or depictions of inappropriate actions. Books throughout libraries receive so many censorship complaints, that the Intellectual Freedom gets 3-5 reports or Censorship activities, per day. Nonetheless, Of Mice and Men should not be one of these victims of censorship, since it opens young adult readers to the use of profanity, a discouraging time in America, and it exposes the readers to the hardships of life.

Why do certain people rule over what each child can and cannot read? Is that not the parents’ job to determine whether or not is it appropriate for their child? When a book is considered banned, parents, teachers, and librarians are discouraged from providing the book to their children. Many of these adults then disapprove of the book without even reading it. Junie B. Jones is thrown from the realm of possibility for many children just because the loveable character has some flaws.

In one particular instance, a bill was passed in Tennessee stating that teachers cannot encourage “gateway sexual activity” (Nazaryan). This bill resulted in Sumner County officials banning Looking for Alaska from the curriculums of all schools due to the book’s single, brief oral sex scene. The Tennessean covered the news of the ban in their newspaper and quoted parents who agreed with the ban, stating that the school board was right in banning the book from the young and impressionable minds of children, who could possibly be so influenced by this blip of a scene in a book, that they might go and immediately engage in the same, or worse, sexual behavior. The newspaper, did however point out that there were alternate ways to address concerns regarding the book, such as offering alternate books to students whose parents were against it. John Green’s YouTube channel, “vlogbrothers”, features a video, “I Am Not A Pornographer”. In it, Green, referring to the ban, states that “there is one frank sex scene. It is awkward, unfun, and wholly unerotic.” (Green). Green goes on to say that the only reason for the existence of that scene is show a contrast between a very physical scene that contains no emotional intimacy and a very non-physical scene that is full of emotion. In another video, “On the Banning of Looking for Alaska”, Green says “text is meaningless without context” (Green) . Green is speaking to his opinion that books are banned most of the time because a parent decides to show a school principal or administrator a single excerpt or page of a book. Without proper context, that excerpt or page can appear to represent a very inappropriate book. Alternatively, if a reader were to assess a book in its entirety, while keeping an opening mind, they could glean important and valuable lessons from

I did not want to shock readers, but I wanted to tell the historical truth, not conceal it. Talking to children about the book before I wrote it helped me decide what to do. My niece’s second grade class invited me to teach a seminar on writing. When I walked into the room, they presented me with a handmade poster offering tips on how to write for kids. Tip #1 was “No foul language.”

Touchy subjects such as war and violence seem to always find their way to the attention of lawmakers and education vigilantes trying to protect our nations youth. But why must we protect them from literary works such as Slaughterhouse Five, and why did this novel find itself under attack and yet other novels of the same subject matter seems to not suffer the same scrutiny? Although Slaughterhouse Five did in fact contain controversial material, which caused some of the aggressive reactions to it, it also was the victim of the times into which it was introduced to its audience in the United States.

proper for our students to read” (Hollins). There is conflict between children and their elders

The Catcher in the Rye was banned and discriminated for multiple reasons, but the prime reason was the containment of “excessive use of amateur swearing and coarse language” and “overt sexuality” (“And Holden” Online; Kerr 49). Critics found the novel to be “wholly repellent in its mingled vulgarity, naïveté, and sly perversion” (“And Holden” Online).

The profanity that is made reference to in this case includes words like goddamn, sex, hell, and others. For example, “I hope to hell when I do die someone has the sense…” (The Catcher in the Rye.). The recommendation to ban a book from school courses such as a means of protecting children for profanity is an escapist approach by critics. Profanity is very excessive in today’s society, the world sex is said after an interval of six minutes on major television channels.

Huck Finn is a historical fiction novel that uses offensive language in a satirical way to portray slavery in the nineteenth century. The novel is questioned for its historical inaccuracies and use in junior high and high school classrooms. Some believe that the “reading aloud of Huckleberry Finn in our classrooms is humiliating and insulting to black students” (Wallace, 17). Yet, others believe that “one gathers a deeper understanding of the meaning of living in a slave society such as the one Huck and his peers lived in” (Barksdale, 49). Because of the novel’s vulgar language and repeated use of the “n-word”: “the appellation commonly used for slaves in slavery time, appears more than 200 times”, the novel can become a source of discussion within the classroom environment (Barksdale, 52). Although students would have to be prepared for the “far-flung historical and psychological causes and consequences”, after reading the novel, its negativity and racial discrimination can be discussed rather than its status as a literary classic (Barksdale, 53). This novel can create a safe way to discuss the use of racial profanities as well as racism during the 19th and 20th centuries compared to the racism experienced in the 21st century. If teachers and students are able to discuss The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a constructive manner rather than

All children can relate in someway to Katherine Patterson’s Newberry Medal-winning children’s novel, Bridge to Terabithia. The characters are realistic people who could be one’s next door neighbors. From the shy and demure Jess to the vivacious and carefree Leslie, every kid can relate to one of the characters in this novel. The themes in this novel vary as much as the characters. Bridge to Terabithia is a good coming-of-age book that captures our imaginations and our hearts.

Now from an opposing point of view brings up an article called “Letter to the Editor of the Charleston Gazette” written by Pat Conroy, he believed that after his books were attempting to be censored that protesting against the Charleston School Board was a great response to defending his work. Conroy’s work was in the process of being suppressed by a group of parents that believed that his work was just a form of violence. He believed that was ridiculous and that teachers prepare their students for any encounters with violence or profanity in any work. Conroy states “The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out”. Therefore, he thinks censoring is more on the dramatic side. He believes that this is a real world and profanity