The first time I read Bridge to Terabithia, I already knew the story. I made the mistake of watching the Movie first and not reading and thinking through the ideas, and connections that the book offers. This mistake spoiled the experiences of reading a book for the first time, and taking in all of the characters, their problems, solutions and the themes that they give with their adventures. You don’t see that if you’re just watching a movie. All of the visualizing and other stuff is right there for you.
One of the main ideas I experienced as I read the book were the different social norms that affect people and who they are. All of these social norms that are placed on people affect who they are and what their most hidden secrets are. And the author shows many examples of this throughout the whole book. An example of this is Jess. He is very passionate about drawing, but he is afraid to tell anyone because he knows that they will judge him and make fun of him. The only person that knows is his teacher and now Leslie knows too. He is too afraid to tell his dad because of all the social norms put on him. Once he told his dad that he liked to draw, and his dad kind of got mad about it. This is the affect that social norms can have on people. Social norms affect people by affectingwh o they are, who they want to be, and it also affects the different relationships between people. It surely affects the relationship Jess has with his dad and Leslie. He is, like many people, afraid to show the world who he really is. He lives in fear of but all of that changes with Leslie...
This leads me to my second point on how social norms affect people, because, when people do build up the courage to express themselves, they are ostracized. or Excluded from things such as society, Friendships, and other stuff. An example of that is Leslie Burk. It was bad enough the=at she was the 'new girl' and she is also very different from everyone at her new school. she wears pants, or jeans every day. Unlike all of the other girls that wear dresses and skirts. And she doesn't have a TV. So she is Ostracized because of all of these differences that she has. but at least she decides to show it and not hide it. that is one characteristic of hers that i have always loved. her courage of being able to step up and risk it all and not care if they teased her or not. I think that that is what Jess loved about her as well. Since he was afraid to show who he really is, he admired her because she wasn't afraid to do all of the things that he was afraid to do.
The author was also able to do something with that rest of the characters as well. She used the other characters to act kind of as enforcers of all these social norms. for example, Jess's dad was kind of enforcing the rules and stuff around Jess's house. he didn't like the idea of Jess playing with Girls because he thought that Jess might want to act like a girl.
There are also the other characters that are about the opposite. for example, Leslie's parents. they are all pretty laid back, and they don't really care if anyone else in the little town dislikes them or calls them 'weird' just because of the way they are. this kind of makes me think, is there actually a 'NORMAL' way to act? Is the word Weird even real? The characteristics of Leslie's parents lead me to think that.
In conclusion, i think that the author was brilliant in being able to weave all of these examples together to form such a meaningful, yet simple children's book.
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