Reading: Lot of kids' books and Jessamym

Moving: Walked 3.6 miles

Listening: Talking Heads

 

 

11 March 2000: Bridge to Other Books

Writing about Katherine Paterson's Parzival, I looked for Park's Quest on my bookshelf. I bought it last year from a used book store. Next to it on the shelf was Bridge to Terabithia, which I have often wanted but always thought I didn't have. I didn't have it for a long time, but in November when I rooted through the box of books I left in my mother's house, there it was waiting for me. And I had forgotten it until now. Weaker books like Jip and Flip-Flop Girl matter nothing compared to The Great Gilly Hopkins, Bridge to Terabithia, and Jacob Have I Loved.

I've reread The Great Gilly Hopkins in the past fourteen years--since, that is, I finally got around to reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Gilly's given name is Galadriel, a point I didn't notice at the age of nine, reading Gilly for the first time. Gilly's teacher gives her the Tolkien books, and lo, at the age of--what, eleven or twelve?--she can read them (I would be 18 and a freshling in college--shh!). Anyway, I knew that Gilly wasn't her given name, but only rereading the book as an adult did I realize the import of that given name.

And in Jacob Have I Loved, Louise listens to a lot of radio but Paterson doesn't betray her character by making her better read than the library-less island of Rass would allow.

I always knew Leslie introduced Jesse to Narnia--it's right there in the title. I don't know which I read first, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Bridge to Terabithia. Probably Bridge, because I remember that in C.S. Lewis the name of the country is Terabinthia so I thought at first he, not Paterson, was wrong. As if Leslie weren't allowed to change the name a little.

And I remembered that Leslie introduces Jesse to Moby-Dick and Hamlet, both of which he thinks she made up on her own: "Someday, when he was good enough, he would ask her to write them in a book and let him do all the pictures." He wanted to paint a white whale shimmering against wine-dark seas and use watercolors to make the ghost emerge from fog.

But about one thing I didn't know, didn't realize. I have not read Bridge to Terabithia since at least the summer of 1989. I wouldn't've guessed it had been that long, but it has been. My complex loyalty rules forbad first my reading any of the Dr. Dolittle books out of order and later my reading about the Austins, since Madeleine L'Engle should stick with the Murrys, thank you very much. Therefore, when Phoebe's children's librarian suggested I read The Book of Three, I didn't finish the first chapter. I didn't want to be disloyal to C.S. Lewis. (I didn't understand yet that his heavy-handed Christian pedagogy was a far worse betrayal.)

In the summer of 1989, I read the Prydain Cycle. Finally. I had just taken a class in Arthurian legend. The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King owe much to the Mabinogion. I remember that words of Gurgi's would be among the last to pass civilly between SEB and me as we planned expeditions for munchings and crunchings. I loved Lloyd Alexander.

Today I reread Bridge to Terabithia. I borrowed Flip-flop Girl, Jip, Parzival, The Master Puppeteer, and The Sign of the Chrysanthemum from the Koelbel library Tuesday night, and Parzival led me to Park's Quest, and that led me to finding Bridge there on the shelf. So I sat, utterly consumed, reading great succulent drafts of this marvelous book, remembering how perfect, harrowing, and wonderful it is, until I got to chapter six, "The Coming of Prince Terrien."

Two paragraphs in I began to cry: "He was reading one of Leslie's books, and the adventures of an assistant pig keeper were far more important to him than Brenda's sauce."

Somewhere, some child must have gone to her children's librarian and asked what book Leslie had lent Jesse that had an assistant pig keeper in it. Somewhere, that children's librarian must have said, "Oh, that's The Book of Three. It's magical. It's by Lloyd Alexander and I bet you can find it all by yourself." That child probably devoured the whole Prydain Cycle in one week that summer, and her whole childhood and life thereafter were changed. She wasn't stupid enough to deny herself Alexander for another dozen years. That child wasn't me.

Katherine Paterson. It doesn't matter that her later books don't stir me the way her earlier books did--because her earlier books keep offering something new.

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Last modified 11 March 2000

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