Appreciatiom Draft

A lot of people think that Bridge to Terebithia is just a book with a sad ending. But if you were to read it again, you might see that this book teaches people about a lot of life lessons. The first time that I was introduced to the book was in 3rd grade. My teacher let us go outside to the school yard and read it aloud to us. That time I didn't pay a lot of attention to the book and didn't learn much from it.

When I read this book again a few weeks ago it taught me multiple valuable lessons. One of these lessons is that you have to be understanding of other's situations. In this book there's a school bully named Janice. She gets Jesse in trouble and is mean to Leslie. One day they find Janice crying. Jesse and Leslie go out of their way to talk to Janice and find out that her dad beats her. That's why Janice bullies kids. After they find this out they treat Janice better. I think that the author of this book (Katherine Paterson) does a really good job of teaching readers lessons such as this one. I think that if people in general were more understanding of each others situations, the world would be a much nicer place to live in.

Another lesson that Katherine Paterson taught me was that it's o.k. to be different. You should be whoever you really are. In the book all of the students make fun of Leslie because she's the only one with money but no television. They also make fun of her because she's the only one who eats yogurt. They pretty much make fun of her just because she's different from the crowd. Jesse becomes friends with Leslie because she's a good person. The people that are close to Leslie are really close to Leslie and that's because of her personality. I know a lot of kids try to follow others instead of being themselves. I like the way Katherine Paterson teaches this lesson.

When Leslie passes away, Jesse is really upset and can't think of anything but Leslie. However Jesse's dad teaches Jesse that he has to move on. From this Jesse and I both learned that sometimes bad things will happen but you have to move on from them. In my own life, I was with my aunt one minute but then she suddenly passed away. I was really sad for a while and I still miss her a lot but eventually you're going to have to move on or you'll just be miserable for the rest of your life. I think the movie Bridge to Terebithia (which I rewatched) makes this point easy to understand.

On the surface, this book may seem like it's just a couple of lonely kids that became friends but if you really pay attention to details, you can learn a lot from this book. I know I did. It's impressive that a childrens book can teach you so many important, adult lessons. I think that the author of this book  Katherine Paterson expects readers to be mature and handle these lessons. I like that she expects this out of readers and I think that it makes this book even better. I consider myself lucky to have been able to read and learn from this fantastic book.