Alright, so to start this off, I'm going to read to you from the internet.
Yes, the whole internet, what people say generally about the middle grade book, Bridge to Terabithia.
So here we go.
The novel was originally published in 1977 by Thomas Crowell.
I guess Thomas Crowell is a publisher of sorts because that is not the name of the author.
The author is a lady and her name is not Tom, or Thomas, or Tommy.
Let's see, in 1978, the next year, one year later, or in the next calendar year, it won
the prestigious Newbery Medal.
I believe both Chuck Everlasting, oh no, I believe Chuck Everlasting won the Newbery
Medal and I said, what are the criteria for the Newbery Medal if this book won it?
Because, spoilers for that episode, Fortress Fiction, I did not like Chuck Everlasting,
but this is a contemporary, yeah, this is a contemporary of Chuck Everlasting, came
out two years later than it.
And I like it a lot and I can understand why it won the Newbery Medal even though I don't
know what the criteria are.
I understand it, but I'll get into that a little bit more later.
Let's see, I don't want to tell you about the inspiration, but you can look into that
on your own.
It's very interesting, it's neat, and gosh, that's all they really say about it.
That kind of stinks.
So yeah, internet, you're letting me down here.
You're letting me down.
But I'll go ahead and tell you, dear folks of the internet, what I think about this book.
So if you can't tell, spoilers, I thought it was really good.
I liked it a lot.
I thought it was fantastic.
I'm going to just dive into it as I want to do on Fortress Fiction and in any sort of
book chat that I do.
And I'm going to be honest, I'm not going to really be critical of this book because
I don't know what to be critical over.
I think it is a very competently written book.
I think it's age appropriate for anybody.
I heard in an interview with the author that I listened to afterwards that it is sometimes
a banned book because it deals with, again, this is major spoilers, and I didn't say any
spoilers yet for the book.
But unfortunately, when you look it up, it automatically, like, within the top results
are the spoilers for it.
And yes, I know the book was from 1975.
It's younger than my parents, but it's not much younger than my parents.
So like anyway, it's a little crazy to me that you would just spoil the book outright.
Instead, you could do something in order to share information about the book.
You talk about the power of imagination and the friendship and the bond between the two
kids in it that is central to the story.
That's a lot of what the story is about, something huge and, you know, crazy, mysterious, ugly,
I was going to say, but that's not quite the right word.
Something dramatic happens towards the end of the book, and it might be exactly what
turned it into the classic that it is, because I don't know how else you were going to end
the story.
But I don't want to go into that yet.
I'm going to wait a little while longer, even though I'm hoping that you've already read
Bridgette Arrbithia if you're listening to this.
And if you haven't, don't go away, because I'll let you know when the spoiler is coming
and you can run away at that point.
So I'll go back real quick.
I think this book is very competently written.
I was going to say beautifully, but I hesitated as you heard there for a few moments because
I don't know that the prose is beautiful because it doesn't try to be flowery.
But the things that it describes are beautiful.
So I guess I'll do a little bit of a summary or just like I'll introduce you to the world
of the Bridge of Bridgette Arrbithia.
And honestly, I know the girl's name is Leslie and the boy is Jess or Jesse.
I think it's Jesse.
I think it's his actual name.
He's Jesse Aaron something or other anyway, or Jesse something errands because he gets
called by that the middle name when he's in trouble getting scolded as people are wanting
to do with kids.
So anyway, and of course, I mean, you know, even kids with other kids, I'm sure that his
sisters have picked up scolding him from his mom.
Anyway, so first of all, or I guess one more thing, I got this from Cloud Library.
I really like the edition I got from Cloud Library.
I don't it's HarperCollins Audio was the the production I listened to.
I don't know if the HarperCollins Audio version is on Audible as well, but I do know that
there is a version of the audiobook on Audible, which I will try to share that information
when I can.
So if you wanted to listen to this for free, you could or if you wanted to go ahead and
buy it, you could.
It's a good book.
It's definitely a recommend.
I think I'll read or listen to again and I'll definitely tell my kids to read it.
I've already told my daughter, actually, my eldest to read it.
And I wouldn't mind owning a copy of this.
It's a really good book.
So anyway, to give you some context, it's about a boy and a girl who know they don't
fall in love.
It's not one of those weird books.
It's about a boy and a girl who are kids growing up in the South in the 1970s.
At some point, we don't exactly know when it's post Vietnam War, but it's very possible
that women are still wearing bell bottoms.
They're definitely wearing tight jeans, which is mentioned.
And I'll get back to that later.
But yeah, the boy is one of six, I believe.
So I think he's got five sisters total.
There's a baby.
There's the sister younger than him.
Maybe there's five total kids.
Then there's his two older sisters.
Gosh, I thought they were like his two older nasty sisters.
And then there was one older sweet sister.
So it's either a family of five or six.
I don't really know the specifics.
I'm going to say this and I mean it with confidence.
The specifics don't really matter.
Who could you say that?
Because they don't.
It's the emotional journey that these characters go on.
And it's really Jesse and Leslie who we care about most.
And everybody in the story that exists around them is just to texture the story and texture
their their stories and and give them the background that they need to give them the
ambiance of the the the environment that they need to exist in.
Like they have to have an allotted dad.
You could have even minimized the parents role and had it be OK.
But I think it's better for including them as much as it does.
And they're not included a lot.
They're very much like the kids are very much.
Jesse and Leslie are very much the characters.
And it just flashed in my mind that I'm saying her name wrong.
Leslie.
It's not Leslie.
But it is Leslie.
I know that for sure.
I'm going to take my reputation out of that.
I know for sure.
That's her name.
For one reason, which is that there's the actor Leslie Nelson, who's a comedic actor,
has been in a bunch of stuff.
And at one point when she's first introduced, introduced Leslie, Jesse is not sure if she's
a boy or a girl because of the way she's dressed and her youthfulness and the fact that she
has gone through puberty.
I'm sure it's part of it.
She's 11, 10, 10 to 11 throughout the course of the book.
I don't know how much the year starts.
I don't know when it starts, but it ends around May.
It's like after Easter.
It's like a few minutes and they that's specifically called out.
So that's why I know.
Maybe it's maybe it's as late as June or getting creeping into summer.
I'm not sure, but it's definitely not early in in the year.
So I am trying to explain to you, Jesse is one boy in a family of girls.
His dad works so hard because they're so poor and he's hardly there and he doesn't play
with his son anymore.
And Jesse is into the arts.
He he won.
He's in the arts.
That's a stupid way to say it.
Sorry.
Excuse me.
I don't prefer to talk like that.
Jesse is an artist.
He loves to draw and he thinks he wants to be a cartoonist or a comic book drawer or
something like that.
Probably a cartoonist, but maybe maybe he's in the comics.
I don't think he mentions at all specifically in the book that he reads comics, but we do
get to see him reading classic children's fiction or classic fantasy, really, which
was in the beginning kind of all geared towards or understood to be for children.
So I think that's how I perceive it anyway.
Anyway, so I'll move on.
So that's Jesse.
And then the other principal character is Leslie.
Leslie is his friend.
She's the weird girl.
She moves in at the place next door, which apparently is a place that lots of other families
have lived at.
And it's kind of like one of those cursed.
Like if you grew up in the suburbs, you know, in like retail, there's like the curse storefront
in the strip mall.
Like, oh yeah, that place, it never stays open.
It always changes.
And it just cycles through again and again and again to be different places.
And that's kind of the same thing.
I think it's the old Perkins place is the one where nobody can seem to stay.
And that's not really significant.
It's just a detail that her family moves there.
And it's her mom or dad and her.
And that's it.
So she's an only child and just feels like he's an only child.
He's the only boy and he's the only one who has who's at his level currently.
Everybody else is at a different level.
He's got older sisters who are trying to be into boys and be into fashion.
And they're kind of nasty and caddy.
And the little sisters kind of copy them a little bit, but they're also very babyish.
And one of them is a hanger on who always wants to play with him.
And she's got her own hanger on who always wants to play with her.
And it's just an interesting, like it's a very realistic family dynamic.
It's 100 percent super, super, super realistic.
And I've been exposed to this, these sorts of family dynamics on multiple fronts.
And I can just attest to the fact that it's like super accurate.
So that's really cool.
And that's the context of the story.
That's where it's taking place.
And you go to their school, they visit each other's homes at some point.
And then there's this, you know, the book is called Bridget Terabithia.
MJ, why aren't you talking about Terabithia at all?
Well, because Terabithia is just another thing that exists in the background, in my opinion,
to service their stories together.
I suppose this is where I'm going to kind of sort of maybe but not really start spoiling
things a little bit.
So Terabithia is unlike the film adaptation, which apparently was approved of and done
in cooperation with the family.
Kathy Gosh, what is her name?
I can't remember the last name, sorry, of the author.
But you check out some of her other books, too, because apparently they're good stuff.
Anyway, so, yeah, unlike the film adaptation, there is no Narnia like fantasy land that
the children enter into.
They know they're playing.
And there's something magical in the fact that these two outcasts, for lack of a better
term, Jesse and Leslie end up working together and playing together and having a special
friendship, which again, does not blossom into a romance.
There's nothing that you know, there's no kissing.
There's no holding hands.
There's no hugging.
There's nothing weird to make it, you know, age inappropriate.
It's like an innocent relationship that the two of them have.
It's a strong relationship.
There's a powerful bond that is formed between them.
But their maintenance of their keeping up with the game that is Terabithia is a beautiful
thing.
It actually like makes me think of or as I was listening to the book, it made me think
of like the magic that is children at play, because the power of imagination and the willing
suspension of belief, not disbelief, the willing suspension of belief that like, yeah, I'm
going to stop believing in this mundane, you know, difficult world I live in.
And for a little while, I'm going to believe in something better and believing something
different, believe in a world of my own making.
Like that's that's beautiful.
That's really beautiful.
And that's something that you get to see in this book.
And it's charming.
It was super charming.
It was super beautiful.
And it didn't need to be lofty or use fancy words or things like that.
And it didn't need to be.
I don't know.
It didn't need to be anything other than like an innocent, sweet, lovely, lovingly told
story of these kids escaping into each other and into this fantasy world that they created,
because life is hard.
And sometimes getting to escape into another world is what you need.
And it's better when that world has like a solid core of reality and truth to it, being
out in the woods, being out in the forest among animals and trees and leaves and the
creek and everything.
And it's even better when that world that escape that you take is into or with another
person because I don't know, people are part of this world too.
And people make this world hard for other people.
Therefore, it's poetic and just that people should make this world easier for other people
too.
And that's what Jesse and Leslie do for each other.
It's really beautiful.
Like I'll start unraveling a little bit more as time goes on.
Like I definitely feel like these kids love each other and that they definitely love each
other and they value each other deeply as friends.
Like they're almost brother and sister.
They almost become each other's brother and sister because Leslie is an only child and
Jesse is estranged from his sisters.
But in loving Leslie the way he does, and I'm just going to boldly state that that's
my interpretation of the book is he loves Leslie and Leslie loves him.
That in loving her the way that he did, it taught him how to love his sisters, at least
his younger sisters.
And it transformed him and helped him to become a better person.
And you really only get his perspective.
You really only get the books told from his perspective so you don't catch everything
that Leslie, you don't catch all her insights.
You don't know exactly what she thinks of him.
But you can tell that there's an affection.
You can tell that there's that love there too.
And like she definitely cares for him and is tender towards him, but in her own like
tomboyish fun sort of way.
And it's really interesting to see the interplay of their relationship and to think about how
it's changed both of them.
And again, like I'm saying, it's more clear how it changes him than how it changes her.
Yeah, that's that's what we'll see for now.
I'm going to pivot to something else and I will get back to Women in Tight Teens.
Okay, don't worry.
I will not abandon that.
And again, this is a family friendly show where I'm talking about what should be family
friendly books in a family friendly way.
Now, now what I'll continue to say is that there is while this is a family friendly book,
there is darkness in it and there is negativity that happens for sure.
There's a girl at school who is a bully who you learn in the course of the book is being
physically abused by her father on a regular basis.
And Leslie is able to offer her comfort and Leslie and Jesse basically become friends
with her after helping her not even really deal with like she's going to continue to
be abused by her father, you know, beaten by her father.
And the book never addresses that it lets it be because it's a fact of life.
And while this book has this fantasy element of terabithia at the heart of it, because
it's this world that allows these kids to escape and it's just the two of them.
It allows them to escape from things and you know, I don't know.
I don't know if they escape to the world and process things or if it's just the world that
they escape to together.
And it makes them better, stronger, nobler people and they can do things like comfort
this girl.
But there's no magic that's going to fix that.
She's still going to be abused by her father.
The facts don't change because you're better at coping with them.
Or you know, in the process of the book, they're better at coping with them.
And that's like heartbreaking.
But it's true.
And it almost makes it even more beautiful.
And it makes the imaginative world of terabithia more important and more powerful in a way,
even though it can't change things, but it can sort of make them better.
And golly, that's really interesting.
That's fascinating.
It's interesting too, because this girl is bullied.
She had been mean to Maybel, Jessie's little sister.
And they ended up together, Jessie and Leslie, coming up with a plan to humiliate the bully,
whose name I can't remember right now.
They mock her, they call her fat, they call her ugly, but they call her fat for sure.
And they plan to embarrass her in front of the whole school, which is awful.
That's bad.
But they're kids.
They're kids without a strong moral guidance.
Jessie and his family never go to church because of something.
They go to church at Easter and I think that's it.
Not even Christmas, just Easter, because of something that happened between his mother
and the pastor, I guess, at the church that they go to occasionally.
And Leslie's parents, they're not religious.
And they're not religious.
I don't know.
She challenges Jessie about a matter of scriptural doctrine, and she asks him, have you even
read the Bible?
And he's like, oh, I've read most of it.
It's about the only book we have here, which is interesting.
But she comes from a much wider world.
Her family comes from Arlington, which I don't know if at the time, if that was considered
to be a big city or not.
Heck, I don't even know if it's really a big city now because I don't pay attention to
the states I don't live in and their specific cities.
Sorry, it's who I am.
I hope you can cope with that.
Anyway, but she just comes from a different world.
Her parents are well-educated.
Not only are they well-educated, but they're well-informed.
They listen to the news or they misinformed.
How does that go again?
Anyway, Jessie's parents are basically country bumpkins.
And that's all they are.
And that may be all they'll ever be.
And her parents being yuppies or hippies and his parents being country bumpkins, that's
never judged by the book.
The parents, at least his parents, think his mom thinks that his parents or her parents
are going to judge her for being so humble and offering them ham sandwiches at one point
because that's the best this poor southern woman has to give.
And that's really interesting and endearing and sweet.
And the book doesn't say anything about it.
It doesn't say whether she's stupid and backwards for worrying about that or whether they do
judge her.
You don't get to see that perspective, but she feels insecure.
You get that perspective.
You get Jessie's perspective knowing that his mom is insecure about their poverty and
about the fact that they're so country and that these people who aren't country or as
country being from Arlington are coming to them and having to deal with them in this
way.
But gosh, it's such a realistic book and yet it's so, I think, family-friendly, kid-friendly.
Definitely dramatic, dark, sad stuff happens, but yeah, that happens in life too.
That happens in life too.
And the book portrays that so beautifully.
I'm going to start opening up again a little bit more.
And again, this is a family-friendly show, but I am an adult and I'm speaking to adults
concerning their children, concerning these books and whether or not they would like them
and how they should regard them or things they should maybe be cautious about regarding
their children reading these books.
So here we go.
For context, I criticize Chuck Everlasting for winning, Winnie Foster, calling Jessie
Chuck beautiful and kind of being in love with him and being infatuated with him while
she was kidnapped and taken to his home with his family.
Once again, it was a gentle kidnapping and you've got to hear the whole context to understand
why I could feel that way and why I could think the kidnapping is okay.
But nobody does any kidnapping in this book.
Nobody calls anybody beautiful, explicitly.
There is a teacher at the school who is a liberated woman, because it's the late 70s,
I think, and she wears jeans, tight jeans apparently, with a funny cow, which I think
means bell-bottoms, but I don't know for sure.
None of the other women at the school do.
She comes in only on Fridays, I believe, as the music teacher and does this music singing
thing with the kids where she's playing her guitar and they're playing or hacking away
at other instruments, trying to play and all singing along, whether it's, I don't know
if it's Beatles songs.
I feel like they mention it in Beatles, but playing popular music and also, I don't know
if it's, it's not God Bless America.
It's like the national anthem or something.
They sing something patriotic as well.
I don't know if they sing any churchy songs, maybe in the south.
I feel like it's Alabama, but I don't know for sure, but it doesn't really matter.
It's supposedly to be nonspecific.
Anyway, but she's like this bright spot in the school and she's the reason Jesse tolerates
going to school.
Her songs and her joy and her, I guess her attractiveness, it appeals to him as a 10
or 11 year old boy and he never lusts after her.
He's not disgusting about it.
He never outright calls her beautiful.
I don't think, but you can tell he's kind of like got a kid level crush on this teacher.
And at one point she takes him out to a museum during this time where it's like pouring rain,
torrential rain right around, right after Easter.
It's during the Easter break, spring break, whatever.
And she takes him to this museum and he has a good time with her.
He enjoys it and he almost wishes that Leslie's with them, but he didn't really have a chance
to get her.
I don't know.
It's somewhere between he didn't have a chance to get her to come along and he didn't ask
because this is his favorite teacher.
Oh yeah, maybe he's sort of in love with her in fact, you would do with and that's okay
because no lines ever get crossed.
Like she doesn't talk about it like it's a date, but she talks about how when she takes
a man out, she, you know, because she's a liberated woman, she pays her own way and
things like that.
Cause he's a poor kid and like she's saying these things to comfort him and he panics
at one point cause he doesn't have any money to pay for food while they're out at the museum
together and she handles it.
But like she plays it off as if as almost as if they're out on a date, you know, she
calls him a man, which he's not.
And she, you know, again, pretends kind of like they're on a date, but not really.
Like it's just a joke and it's just a way to cover over this uncomfortable thing that
this kid's impoverished and you don't want to embarrass him by pointing that out.
So instead she turns it into something else and you know, makes it okay that he's not
paying cause you know, they're not going Dutch.
She, you know, she's taking care of the whole bill this time, you know, maybe next time
he'll take care of it or whatever, but like that's all it is.
And it's a very innocent and very sweet.
And I don't feel like she was a creeper at all.
It was the 1970s.
I think this sort of thing would happen in the 1970s in the South with a single woman.
If she was married, maybe her husband would be there with her, but then again, if she
was married, she probably wouldn't have taken Jesse or maybe she would have taken him and
another kid or two.
But you know, that those things kind of don't matter.
And I feel like it's a completely different circumstance.
She ostensibly gets permission from him.
He goes and tries not too hard to wake up his mom and she kind of rolls over and says
mumbles yes, then goes back to sleep.
So you know, that's not her though.
That's not on the teacher whose name I don't remember at the moment.
That's not her.
She wasn't doing that.
She was in good faith trying to get permission from his parents.
She asked, do you need to get permission?
He said, yes, I do.
Yes, yes, I do, man.
I'll be right back.
And he went and got permission, so to speak, from his mother.
But that's his infraction.
That's his violation.
That's nothing on her.
And then nothing untoward happens.
I don't think even whiffing of a creepiness happens.
He just mentions the fact that she's got pretty hair and it brushes against his face when
she's leaning over to talk to him about something and he takes note of it, which is very much
a reasonable thing to happen.
But it's not treated.
She's not taking advantage and he's not really being a creep either.
He's not taking advantage of it.
He's shocked by it and his mind is kind of blown by it, but it's not that way.
And yeah, you may argue that I'm justifying it because it was a boy in this circumstance
and not a girl, but hey, you know what?
Go ahead, argue with me.
Let's talk about it.
If you read the book, especially if you read it recently, then let's talk about it and
you can tell me where I'm missing things or where I've turned a blind eye to secret hidden
creepiness in this book, like Untucked Everlasting.
But yeah, I don't see it.
And if you can reveal it to me in some conversation, I'd be happy to hear you out.
But I just I don't see it.
I don't see it.
It feels really innocent to me and it feels handled very well.
Even though like, yeah, maybe he you know, or he definitely had a crush on this lady
and maybe he could have said he was in love with her.
Maybe he could have like he didn't try to like, oh, I'm going to get her to kiss me
or I'm going to, you know, kiss her or like hold her hand or none of that happened.
None of that happened at all.
And I'm just being defensive over the book now.
Now we are late into this episode.
This is the longest so far an episode of Fortress Fiction is gone.
And I'm going to let it go a little bit longer because I'm going to get into the guts.
I'm going to get into the full spoilers.
We're going to go 100 percent.
So if you have not read this book, but you're intrigued about this book, about a friendship
between a boy and a girl in the south where they basically become brother and sister to
each other, where they become like family to each other because they're both kind of
on the outs and alone in their own way and they find solace and comfort in each other.
But then there's this whole thing about this, you know, this teacher that I've been going
on about what's going to happen.
What's what's it?
Why did somebody ban this book?
Well, I'll tell you right now, if you haven't gotten out of here, I'll give you like five
more seconds and I'm going to tell you what happens.
The reason this book is banned is apparently because 10 years old, according to some people,
is not an appropriate age to deal with death.
Death is not a topic appropriate for 10 year olds.
Ten year olds encounter death, though they encounter it in their grandparents.
God forbid in their own mother and father.
God forbid they experience it with a sibling or a friend.
And that's exactly what happens in this book.
Leslie dies.
I didn't go over this and we never talked about why the book is called Bridge to Terabithia,
but I'll just say it now.
It's because at the end of the book, Jess builds a bridge to Terabithia so that his
sister, Mabel specifically, and maybe even the younger one below her, can enjoy Terabithia
safely one day because he's going to introduce them to the wonder and magic and imagination
of Terabithia, which he was king of and Leslie was queen of until she died.
And the way that they got into Terabithia was through swinging over a rope or swinging
over a little dry stream, which becomes full of water during those April showers during
the Easter break.
It rains and rains and rains and it's so swollen that Jessie is scared to go over the water
and he wants to cross some other way, but they never have a full conversation about
it.
And then I guess while he's at the museum with the teacher, Leslie goes ahead and wants
to go to Terabithia herself and enjoy it in the rain like they had previously, like just
the other day.
And she ends up slipping off, falling into the water.
The water is moving quickly.
She hits her head against a rock.
I assume she drowns and dies.
And that's awful.
Like this book is only three hours long and somehow in that three hours or less than three
hours I have enough of a strong emotional connection.
Maybe it's because I'm thinking about, God forbid, this sort of thing happening to my
own kids or just how sad it would be to lose a friend like that or to lose your child.
I mean, I have, I thought about my wife, you know.
Just the phrase, she's my Leslie comes to mind.
And that's not entirely accurate.
But it's close enough to be true that like imagine losing your best friend like that
is awful.
And then also being a father, imagine losing a child like that is absolutely awful.
And it's so sad.
And it's so bitter.
But the book is sweet overall.
And it's even sweet in the morning process.
And I mean, surely it's bittersweet.
But like, I don't know, it's a beautiful book.
It's a beautiful book, even though this little girl dies, this innocent little girl dies.
And then this innocent boy is left to deal with that.
The fact that his friend is dead and he can't do anything about it.
There is no magic that can bring her back.
And I don't know.
He wants to deny it.
He pretends it didn't happen for a while until he admits that it did.
And then he processes it.
And like, yeah, it's so hard to talk about.
He ultimately processes it by or, you know, after his mother and father treat him kind
of in a special way.
And his dad tries to comfort him, but he doesn't have the words.
And he just holds his son and tells him, yeah, this is hard.
And he says, hell, like, it don't get any easier.
Or it gets worse, I think is what he tells him.
And, you know, he's a strange father who, for many reasons, couldn't be close to him
anymore.
And that hurt him, hurt Jess in a big way, you know, through this tragedy, they become
a little closer.
And there's like healing for him in drawing close to some of his family.
His father, for sure, maybe his mother, probably his mother.
She seems like a good lady.
She's just tired and poor and trying hard.
And his little sister, Maybel, beneath him for sure, Jess comes closer to her and helps
her.
Helps her.
And he turns to her and helps her with open arms and with warmth.
And that helps to heal him and help him cope with the tragic loss of his friend.
And yeah, I mean, it's beautiful.
It's so beautiful.
I need to take a break because I'm super emotional.
And I don't know what to say other than spending the next five minutes just figuring out different
ways to say this is a beautiful book.
So I'm back.
I have recovered.
And we'll see if I collapse again under the weight of my heart, under the weight of emotions.
But here we go.
So I was thinking about this book a little bit more.
And the last thing I want to close out with is just a little bit of well, first of all,
before I get going, I want to remind you that I'd love to hear your thoughts on this book.
Did you like it?
Did you not like it?
Were you as shocked as me when you saw the film adaptation and it went from being something
cool and fantastical and fun to something heartbreaking?
Because that was a shocker to me.
But yeah, any questions you have about it, any thoughts you have about the book itself
or about my possible hypocrisy and liking the complexity of relationships that we explore
with Jess a little bit, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on all that stuff.
So yeah, before, like I said, before I forget, because I'm going to get spun up, I was really
pleased with the fact that there were some literary references.
There were some real politique references here.
Like the story didn't hold back on being very realistic and feeling very much like it was
a slice of life cut out of somebody's, you know, somebody's life, someone's real world
and presenting to you as, you know, this fantastical story.
And it's the thing is, it's not really a fantastical story.
The wonder and the magic that the kids experience is fantastical, but we don't really get to
see.
We don't really get to see it.
It's like set dressing.
It's just there in the background humming along all on its own.
I don't know what terabithia looks like, sounds like anything like that.
You know, to me, it's vaguely Narnia, which they reference the Narnia books.
Leslie Lenz, Jess, all her Narnia books, which is super cool.
They also reference the adventures of an assistant pig keeper, which I'll just tell you is the
Chronicles of Bredain, which is amazing because I think weren't those books super new?
I think those books came out in the seventies.
So that's like super.
Well, and also the first book came out, I think, believe early seventies.
So that's like super of the time, super modern or super what's the word I'm looking for?
I'm not sure.
But the whole Chronicles of Bredain, that's fantastic book series.
I don't believe I've included any of Lloyd Alexander's masterpiece.
I haven't read all this stuff, so I couldn't tell you, but it's a fantastic set of books,
five books.
Those are a hard recommend.
I don't think I'm going to be talking about them in this twenty twenty four fortress fiction,
but they definitely obviously they belong in the fortress.
They are potentially a wonderful foundation piece and Keystone and Cornerstone and all
that good stuff for the fortress fiction because they're just that darn just this is that blessedly
good.
So anyway, check those out.
And they're not better or worse than Terabithia.
They are different.
They're entirely different breeds of books meant to do different things.
But they're both beautiful and heartbreaking in their own ways.
I would say the Chronicles of Bredain less so than Bridges of Terabithia, but still great
stories and great stories, wonderful, fun characters.
Anyway, they mention Lewis.
They mentioned Alexander.
They don't talk about Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit at all.
There's no mention of those.
What else is there?
I don't know.
I was really surprised and pleased with like the TV and music and like general pop culture
references.
Like these feel like real kids in the real time.
And like there's even talk of Vietnam War, you know, being post Vietnam War.
And it's just like, I don't know, it was very cool, like the realness of the world.
The only thing is that I don't think there were any Marvel or DC Comics characters mentioned,
which I'm fine with.
It's just maybe being on the sticks.
This wouldn't have had very good access to those.
But my impression is that people in rural southern states also had decent access to,
you know, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Batman, if you must, Superman, I guess
too.
You see where my bias is my line.
But anyway, I liked it like it felt like it felt like Leslie and her family because her
parents are so well educated.
Like they're very well rounded and worldly and they want to absorb all this culture and
stuff, which to me is like more I'm closer to Jess's dad, like, you know, blue collar,
except I'm really into books, right?
But like I'm much closer to being blue collar than being a yuppie.
I think, I think, I don't know, like I definitely work a blue collar job.
I'm in a blue collar work vehicle right now, driving it down the road, you know, in blue
jeans and stuff.
So I don't know.
That's weird and it doesn't really matter how I assess myself, but I definitely identify
and have an appreciation for the blue collar among us.
And yet I do think that fiction is accessible, especially fantasy is accessible because it
just takes you to another world.
And both the yuppie and the, you know, the poor farmer kid can enjoy the marvel and the
wonder and the fantasy of being in a kingdom and watching an epic battle involving good
and evil and kingdoms and crowns and knights and wizards and witches and stuff like that.
Everybody can appreciate that because I think those stories are so mythic that they just
take on, that they, they, you can see the archetypes through them or you can feel the
archetypes through them and that matters more than anything else.
You can see your uncle or your grandpa or the nice guy down the street as the wizard
or maybe your mom's the wizard.
She's into alternative medicines and stuff.
And you know, maybe your dad's the warrior or heck, maybe it's even your mom who's dealing
with bedtime and sick kids and teachers being upset with her kids and she does her battle
every day and your dad's the ranger going off and then coming back tired and bringing
in something for the family.
It just, it all scales, all the fantasy.
Like I've heard this said, and I don't know if it's true because I haven't studied it,
but I believe it's probably true that when we read something, when we watch something,
we experience that thing.
Like our brains don't really understand that these things are happening to different, to
characters, to fictional characters.
They feel, they feel, they perceive, they see these things as if they're happening to
us.
And that's really groovy.
But I think that's something that people know.
I think it's something that people who write books and want to tell stories like into it,
like they know that their stories matter because they know that they can make an impact on
people.
And I, one, appreciate that and I like that and I felt that in this book.
And two, I feel like the nods that Kathy, I'm so sorry.
I'm not trying to be flippant or disrespectful.
I just can't remember the author's name.
I was more focused on the book itself than who she is, but I feel like she felt that
and she knew that and she kind of had that in mind.
Katherine Patterson, I think later in some of her other books, she's Katie, Katie Patterson,
but here Katherine Patterson, that's her name.
That's the author of this wonderful, wonderful book, the excellent author of this wonderful
book.
And I think she was saying like, yeah, you know, I'm not a Tolkien, Tolkien wasn't mentioned.
I'm not a Lewis.
I'm not a, who else did I mention?
Oh, I'm not an Alexander.
I'm not any of these people, but or, and I'm not jealous of them and I admit that their
books are great and wonderful and beautiful and have amazing things in them.
And I cherish them and treasure them so much that I'm going to make these kids in my story
also treasure and cherish them as well and gain so much from them.
And that's really cool.
And I mean, the time that they must have known each other, they got together in the beginning
of the school year, which is like the fall and then by the spring Leslie was dead.
And in between then he must have read, he must have devoured Jess must have devoured
the Chronicles of Narnia and some of the other books.
So that's pretty cool.
And then even like the way that there's this really interesting conversation they have
because Leslie isn't religious and there she goes to Easter Sunday, I guess, Sunray service
or whatever with the, with the family, with Jess's family and Maybel ends up talking to
her and there's almost like a philosophical debate and question and thing like, or debate
kerfuffle kind of thing because Leslie and her family aren't religious at all.
And Jess's family ostensibly are to the fact to the point that Maybel says you've got to
believe like you have to believe the Bible.
If you don't believe the Bible, that's not okay.
Like how can you do that?
And you're going to go like the Bible says, or you know, I learned basically Maybel said,
I learned that if you don't believe everything the Bible says, you're going to hell.
And Leslie wasn't raised that way.
And she says, you know, how can you say that?
Does the Bible say that?
Did you actually read that in the Bible?
She challenges their presuppositions, which I believe I've read the Bible cover to cover
many times.
And I know for a fact that it doesn't say that if you don't believe everything in the
Bible says, whether that's some of it or all of it, that you're going to hell.
That's not how God works.
That's, that's how God works at all.
In fact, the character of God is so merciful that he lets people keep on sinning and he
forgives them and wants them to do better.
And that's part of the reason I have the beliefs I do in the way that's the way I understand
God.
And it's interesting that this essentially religious family doesn't see that or doesn't
see the graciousness and the love and the mercy of God.
And yet this well learned girl from an unreligious family, she sees that in the service and in
in the message that's being shared when she goes and visits with the family.
And I think that's pretty interesting.
And I don't quite know what that means, but it's interesting.
And it creates a very interesting touch point later that like Jess is worried that Leslie
might be burning in hell, which is an awful thought.
And his father assures him that like, you know, like he's like, where did you hear that
from?
Like there's no way God is going to send a little girl to hell to burn because you know,
whatever, for any reason, really.
And I believe that's true.
I believe that's true.
I believe that's right.
And that's a meaningful, hopeful, beautiful message.
And that's that's part of it.
So and you can take that from being a fundamentalist religious person, or you can take that as
a secular person who doesn't really believe in the stuff kind of like Leslie and her family.
But you can still see that and feel that message of hope and that message of mercy and grace.
And it's it's beautiful.
So I think I've reached the point where I have nothing more to say about this book except
to laud it.
And other than suggesting that you read it, I don't have anything to say.
So if you have anything to say, I'd love to hear it.
You can leave comments wherever you find this post.
Get me go over to MJMullinios.com and you can find the post for this episode and leave
notes after the fact.
Or hopefully you're one of the people who got comments in before I ended the episode
and I include them coming up next.
Now this endeavor of Fortress Fiction and Story Over Everything kind of story over everything
paused for a while, like a couple of months.
And then I came back with a vengeance to do Fortress Fiction, among other things.
And I do want to invite from here on out at the end of the book, I'm going at the end
of the book chat, I'm going to tell you what book I'll be reading next.
And I want to invite people to make comments on those or on the upcoming book.
So if you can get it from Cloud Library, everything is on Audible on my list for sure.
But if you can get it from Cloud Library or some other legal and free source, I suggest
you do that.
So Bridge of Terabithia is classified by me as modern middle grade.
Modern middle grade.
So the next book will be a classic middle grade book because that's the pattern.
It's going to be Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott, which was published apparently in
1868.
It's a coming of age story about the four March sisters during the Civil War era.
So that should be interesting.
I've seen, I've never seen an entire Little Women movie from start to finish.
And I've never even tried to read one of the books.
So I'll be reading an interesting, I guess you could say that Bridge of Terabithia is
a coming of age story written by a woman about a boy, mostly.
And well then Little Women is going to be a coming of age story written about four girls
by a woman.
And it'll be interesting.
They're about a hundred years, like 90 years apart from each other when they were created
and released.
So that'll be interesting.
And we'll see how well I like that.
And again, I invite you to make comments on the book as well because it's a classic.
My eldest read it and loved it, so I'm looking forward to it.
It should be interesting.
I like Jane Austen.
I hope you enjoyed that.
Subscribe to keep up with me.
Like and share to help me reach more people like you.
And go to MJMunoz.com to find your next favorite thing.
And don't forget to let your voice be heard.
Stories are always better when you're part of the conversation.
Until next time, be well.
This is MJ signing out.
This has been a Story Over Everything production.