FAITH talks with
Katherine Paterson,
author of Bridge to Terabithia

FAITH Magazine talked with Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, winner of the Newbery Award, and the basis for a new movie by Disney.

I’ve heard the title pronounced several ways – is the accent on the third or fourth syllable?
When I was a child, I could read print better than I could pronounce things. So I’m thoroughly in favor of people making up pronunciations. But what I say is Terabithia, with the accent on the third syllable.

How involved were you in making this movie?
I wasn’t involved at all the first time this was made into a film. But for this new one, I had given the rights to my son, David, who is a playwright and screenwriter. And of course, he had to find the money. Because this isn’t the kind of movie you can build the sets for, as he did for his first movie with Sundance. So, I just put it into his hands. I was not involved in it until just before shooting the film. David sent me the shooting script and asked me to comment on it and I did. Although he had written an original script, there had been extensive rewrites. So, there were a lot of things I was worried about, as you can imagine. The writer is the worst person to ask for comments.

How do you feel about the finished product?
I haven’t seen the absolutely finished movie, but I saw it at a very late stage and I was happily surprised. It’s a strong movie and a movie I’m not ashamed to send people to see. I’m going to send all my friends to see it.

How does the movie differ from the book?
The chief departure from the book is time – the book was published 30 years ago and they felt it would be better to try to set it in the present. Of course, that makes certain other changes inevitable. Also, the books goes through three seasons – they condensed it into one season. It is set in the fall, so we don’t experience Christmas and Easter with the children – they do go to church, but it’s not on Easter Sunday.

Occasionally, The Bridge to Terabithia has been criticized for its portrayal of religion. I know that you’re the child of missionaries, were a missionary yourself and have been married to a minister for 45 years – how do you respond to those criticisms?
I’m not sure what they want as a portrayal of religion. The book is a story, not propaganda. Propaganda sometimes gets a bad name, but actually it means you have something you believe and want to share. In a story, you don’t have an answer, you are feeling your way to what will be an emotional answer for you. If you start out knowing and telling, you’re not writing a story anymore. The portrayal of religion in the book is from the children’s point of view, not mine. It’s not my view of religion; it’s what I think would be true to the character of these children. I’ve written materials for the church, but that’s not what I’m doing when I’m writing a story.

The name of Terabithia is similar to Terebinthia in The Chronicles of Narnia.
It’s pretty straightforward in the book – Leslie has no religious background but she’s read The Chronicles of Narnia. Terabithia modeled on that. When I realized I had named the place very close to Terebinthia, I was a little appalled, because I had done it totally unconsciously. But it was very much what Leslie would have done. She was influenced by what she had read. And of course, Lewis himself had pinched from the Bible.

The book deals heavily with the theme of death – is that hard for children to deal with?
I don’t think any of us are ready to deal with that, unless we are total saints. Even when we are sick or old, we have trouble adjusting.

Two of my children lost friends by the time they were 8 years old. People have said the topic of death is not age-appropriate for a 10-year-old. Maybe not, but it happens. I think they’d rather read it in the book before they have to meet it in their lives.

And the specific impetus for this story was the death of one of your son’s friends by lightning strike, wasn’t it?
Yes, my son David’s best friend, a little girl, was killed by lightning. I was writing out of that tragedy – trying to make sense of something that didn’t make sense. It was very hard for my son and he’s had to deal with it again since he’s the one making the movie. When he was younger, he would carry the book around with him, but didn’t really read it.

Children have to deal with loss and they need a context to put it in. The loss isn’t always death – sometimes it’s a friend moving away or a divorce.

Tell us a little about your own childhood – your parents were missionaries in China?
Yes, I lived in a compound in China and I grew up speaking Chinese and English equally well. My childhood was very torn up because of World War II. After the war, we were never able to go home again. Those years were very difficult for me. We were evacuated once to the United States, sent back to China and then evacuated again. Then I began to get my feet on the ground in the United States and not be regarded as quite so weird as I had been.

It sounds as if a lot of your own childhood experiences are in this book as well
Oh, yes! People are always saying, “Where do you get your characters?” And I say, “You mean, besides me?”

What was it like being a missionary yourself?
I grew up wanting to go back to China because that was home. But China was not open, so I couldn’t return. I had a friend in seminary who was Japanese and persuaded me to go there. I had never dreamed I would go to Japan because, when I was a child, the Japanese were the soldiers and bombers. But my friend persuaded me that if I gave the Japanese people a chance, I would learn to love them. So I went to Japan – and to be loved by people you thought you hated is a very humbling and wonderful experience. We should all have it.

What is the overall theme of the book and movie for you?
It’s hard for me to put into a sentence. The end of the book is a very important element –the main character’s interaction with his sister is a resurrection moment.

I’d like people to go to the movie with an open heart. I’ve been a little distressed by the trailer, which has made it seem like an adventure story. It’s not really like that. When they showed the trailer to my son, he said, “My mom’s going to hate it.”