Bridge to Terabithia

Leslie Burke is an only child who moves to Lark County. Her parents are well-off writers who want to live a simpler life, something that Leslie finds exciting. Her appearance is the first thing that sets her apart from her peers who try to dress up for the start of school. Although Leslie’s family is wealthy, she dresses simply, with “jaggedy brown hair” (22), a blue undershirt, cut-offs, and shoes with no socks.

More than her appearance, Leslie’s unapologetic confidence makes her stand out. She is friendly and outgoing, greeting Jess and saying they might as well be friends since they are neighbors. When her classmates gawk at her for her tomboyish appearance, she stands confidently and seems unbothered. Leslie’s favorite hobby is scuba diving, something their teacher notes is “[a]n unusual hobby—for a girl” (43). Leslie is also distinct from her classmates because of her intelligence and rapport with adults. She is an avid reader and writer, and their formidable teacher, Mrs. Myers, adores her. Leslie has a good relationship with her parents and is intuitive enough to know when to be polite to Mrs. Aarons, toning down her “usual sparkle.”

Leslie’s bravery and vivid imagination make her the leader in her friendship with Jess. She pushes Jess to be more assertive, telling him he must stand up to people like Janice Avery: “Otherwise, they turn into tyrants and dictators” (54). While Leslie helps Jess change, she is always encouraging. When Jess says he can’t capture trees in his art, she insists that he will eventually. While Jess’s character development is the primary focus of the book, Leslie grows up too. When Jess pushes her to reach out to Janice, she thanks him later. Like Jess, Leslie’s life is enriched by their friendship.

May Belle Aarons is Jesse’s seven-year-old sister. While the other three sisters pick on Jess, Maybell “worshiped him.” Although Jess picks on her, May Belle remains kind. Even when Jess slaps her across the face for asking if he saw Leslie’s body, she forgives and follows him so he won’t feel alone. Although Jess might pick on May Belle or exclude her from Terabithia, he is fond of her. He knows that if he showed her his comical drawings, “she would laugh like a live audience on TV” (14).

At only seven years old, May Belle is innocent and gullible. When her father brings her twinkies as a treat, she shows them off in front of the bully. She threatens to tattle on Jess when he excludes her, thwarted only by his threat to tell the school gossip that she still wets the bed. May Belle’s innocence is obvious when she earnestly warns Leslie about hell. When Leslie says that she does not believe in hell, May Belle is terrified, worrying for Leslie’s soul. Jess chooses May Belle to be the next queen of Terabithia, implying that May Belle has a similar future of character development.

Miss Edmunds is the music teacher at Lark County School. She has black hair and blue eyes and plays guitar. While she is only at school on Fridays, her attention and kindness have an enormous impact on Jess. Jess trusts her enough to show her his drawings, which she compliments. Like Jess, Miss Edmunds is an outsider at school. While some of the teachers are strict, she sits cross-legged on the floor and asks students about their summers. When Leslie is new, Miss Edmunds notices her and asks to be introduced.

Miss Edmunds is modern compared to the strict, old-fashioned community. She is the only female teacher to wear pants and forego lipstick. This, combined with the fact that she sings songs like “This Land is Your Land” makes people call her a hippie. Jess sees her as a “beautiful wild creature” (15) and feels love for her. He does not just have a puppy crush but something “real and too deep to talk about” (14). This is probably because she is the only adult who attentively affirms him and makes him feel significant. Knowing Jess’s family doesn’t encourage his artistic gift, she invites him to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and insists on buying him lunch, joking that she is a “liberated woman,” sensing his embarrassment at having no lunch money. Her intuitive kindness has a profound impact on Jess’s development; if not for her encouragement, Jess may have discarded his artistic creativity long ago.

Mr. Aarons, Jess’s father, is a hardworking man with a large family to provide for. He is therefore absent from Jess’s life: He wakes up early to leave for work and often does not return until late in the day. While the story does not specify his livelihood, he commutes to Washington after “digging and hauling all day” (5). He is demoralized by losing his job just before Easter—a major setback for an already under-resourced family.

Mr. Aarons gives in to his wife and older daughters’ desires and plays with the youngest daughters. While he does not chide Jess about chores as often as his wife does, he pays him little attention until Leslie dies. When Jess is clearly in denial about Leslie’s death, Mr. Aarons tells him that he needs to accept it. At this point, he plays a significant role in comforting Jess. When Jess runs down the road crying, Mr. Aarons follows him and embraces him while Jess kicks and cries. He also follows Jess to Terabithia after visiting the Burkes and speaks to him as an equal. His simple comment, “Hell, ain’t it?” (147), makes Jess feel like a man. While Mr. Aarons is not present throughout the novel, his sympathy helps Jess find closure after Leslie’s death. While Mr. Aarons does not change in a significant way, he steps up and helps Jess overcome his grief.

Mrs. Aarons, Jesse’s mother, is a middle-aged woman from Georgia, worn down by the pressure of having a large family and little money. She is insecure about her family’s status and withdrawn from her children’s lives. Perhaps embarrassed by her economic status and lack of education, Mrs. Aarons feels awkward around the wealthier Leslie, commenting on her “tacky clothes” and “hippie” parents. Although the family only attends church on Easter, it is incredibly important to Mrs. Aarons that they look their best.

At home, Mrs. Aarons exerts little control over Brenda and Ellie, who manipulate their way out of chores. She seems completely oblivious to their taking advantage of her. Despite Jess’s help, she complains about him being slow to do his chores. When Jess jumps up to milk the cow on Christmas day, she grumbles that “Miss Bessie don’t take no holiday” (81) and claims that Ellie is “the only one of you kids ever cares whether I live or die” (81). Likely exhausted from the pressure on her family, she snaps whenever her youngest daughter cries, blaming whoever upsets her.

Mrs. Aarons seems to sleep or withdraw regularly. When Jess wakes up early, he knows that “Momma would be mad as flies in a fruit jar if they woke her up this time of day” (1). When Jess tells her about going into Washington with Miss Edmunds, she does not wake up enough to register what he says. Later, when Jess disappears, she has no idea where he went. It takes Leslie’s death for Mrs. Aarons to finally soften toward her son. She cooks pancakes for Jess and, instead of her usual accusations of laziness, she kindly tells him that his father is doing Jess’s chores. This side of her suggests that she is not sadistic; she takes out her own struggles on her son.

Leslie’s parents, Bill and Judy Burke are well-off authors who move to rural Virginia to “[reassess] their value structure” (40)—an erudite phrase reflecting their privileged education. Their wealth, while not showy, is still obvious to Jess, who notes “that the jeans they wore had not come off the counter at Newberry’s” (58) (a five-and-dime variety store of the decade the novel was written). Still, the Burkes live simply. They own no TV and renovate the Perkins’ place on their own, despite their lack of practical knowledge.

The Burkes are younger than Jess’s parents and have “straight white teeth and plenty of hair” (57). Judy is a novelist who will go from chatting with Leslie and Jess to rushing back to her study when inspiration strikes. Bill and Judy are less anxious and more present than the Aarons parents. Bill especially genuinely enjoys spending time with Leslie and Jess. While their characters are static, they provide a stable encouragement for Jess.

Jess and Leslie’s fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Myers is known to smile only on the first and last days of school. While Jess might be too young to notice the strain on “Monster-Mouth Myers” (29), it does occur to him that “she, too, wished to postpone regular school as long as possible” (26). Mrs. Myers has 31 students in her small classroom, and the school is also short on supplies.

Mrs. Myers is fond of the bright and engaged Leslie Burke. When Leslie passes away, Mrs. Myers shows her encouraging and kind side. When she shares about her own struggle with losing her husband and how others pressured her to forget the pain, she helps Jess realize that he would always remember Leslie. While Jess does not interact with Mrs. Myers again, her encouragement—“Let’s try to help each other out, shall we?” (159—is part of what causes him to reach out to May Belle and move forward after his loss. As a character, Mrs. Myers shows that everyone has their own story and troubles—even people who might first seem like an antagonist.

Brenda and Ellie are Jess’s two older sisters. Their names are almost always brought up as a unit because that is how Jess sees them. Jess feels that they have “despised” him since he stopped letting them dress him up like a doll. They complain about Jess’s smell after he runs and tease him for his friendship with Leslie. The two sisters are manipulative, finding their way out of work and extracting money from parents already financially pressed: “These girls could get out of work faster than grasshoppers could slip through your fingers” (8). When they discover that their father has been laid off, they cry “like two sirens going to a fire” (101), not out of concern for their family but because they cannot get new outfits for Easter. When they whine their way into new outfits, they parade them through church like “a pair of peacocks with fake tail feathers” (106). Unlike Jess, who feels remorseful for mistreating his little sister, Ellie and Brenda are relentless in their bullying.

Brenda and Ellie are static characters, completely unchanged at the end of the book. Brenda bluntly tells Jess when Leslie dies. They are disgusted when he does not seem to be grieving how they think he should: Ellie complains that “he’s just sitting there eating pancakes like nothing happened” (138) while Brenda says that “[b]oys ain’t supposed to cry at times like this” (138). Their flat characters serve as a warning of what the young people might become without character development.