Bridge to Terabithia

Jess Aarons, an artistic, poor boy in rural Virginia who spends the summer training to be the fastest runner in his grade, is beaten in a race by Leslie Burke, an outspoken new girl from a wealthier, more bohemian family who quickly becomes his closest friend despite that first defeat. Together they invent Terabithia, an imaginary kingdom in the woods behind their houses, reached by swinging across a creek on a knotted rope, and rule it together as king and queen, a private world that gives both of them room to be braver and stranger than school allows. During a rainy spring break, while Jess is away for the day on a rare trip to a museum with his music teacher, Leslie tries to swing across the creek alone; the rope snaps, and she falls, hits her head, and drowns in water swollen by the storm. Jess learns of her death only after he returns home, and the book's second half follows his raw, disorganized grief, denial, guilt, and eventually a kind of dazed acceptance, worked through with the help of his teacher and, most directly, his younger sister May Belle. In the closing pages Jess builds a real wooden bridge across the creek where the rope once was and brings May Belle across it, formally naming her the new queen of Terabithia, choosing to keep the imaginary kingdom alive rather than let Leslie's death close it forever.

Reading it is plain and direct in its language but emotionally exact, and Paterson refuses to let Jess's grief resolve into anything tidy or explained away. Younger readers often arrive unprepared for how bluntly the book handles a child's death, and that honesty, rather than any twist, is what has made it both one of the most loved and one of the most challenged books ever to win the medal.