Reading...and Watching

So I've been thinking a lot recently about the books I read when I was young, primarily because I feel incensed every time a commercial for the movie of Bridge to Terabithia. When I was in elementary school, I read constantly. At the library, I took out twenty books at a time. I would keep the books I was reading in a giant pile at the foot of my bed, growing book by book until the stack teetered precariously. Every once in a while, the pile came crashing to the ground in the middle of the night, which my mother hated.

I had special affection for books that won the Newbery Medal. I'm not sure why - certainly they're not the only good books out there, maybe it had to do with the thrill of trying to collect each one. I went through similar periods of obsession with list-y things - the presidents of the US, the fifty states - I was a weird kid. After about 1950 or so, there are some really amazing books among the Newbery winners (before that, they tend a bit more towards the educational and deadly boring) - A Wrinkle in Time, The Westing Game, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Bridge to Terabithia, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Jacob Have I Loved, I could go on, clearly. Which is a somewhat roundabout way of saying that I can't believe the way that this movie is being marketed.

The film version of Bridge to Terabithia places it along with Harry Potter and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as a fantasy. There's nothing wrong with those other adaptations being presented as such - they are fantasies, and part of the fun of a movie based on a fantasy novel is seeing the worlds and creatures of that novel brought to life. The thing is, Bridge to Terabithia isn't a fantasy. Not even close. The book is firmly rooted in real life, to the extent that everyone who I know of who has read it remains devastated by its reality years later. The fantasy exists solely in the minds of the main characters, which makes the real-life occurrences that much more real to the reader. I guess it worries me that kids will see the movie and then be disappointed by the book, and a world where a child can no longer be swept away by the emotions of a book like Bridge to Terabithia is one of which I want no part.