Winning Essays 

Topic: Reading Helps Us to Learn

By Bess Zafran

          A book that I have read lately was “Bridge to Terabithia”.  This book is by Katherine Paterson.  It helped me to learn about life.  I learned that things happen, no matter what.  You might have liked what happened, or you might have hated it.  But whatever happens, you just have to keep going. 

         This book is about a boy named Jesse Oliver Aarons.  He always wanted to be the fastest runner in the grade.  He was going to be, until he met the new student, Leslie Burke.  She outran the fifth grade!  That was one thing that happened that Jesse disliked, but he still kept going.  Later on in the story, Jesse and Leslie become great friends.  They decide to make an imaginary world in the woods, Terabethia, in which they would be King and Queen.  During the rest of the story, exciting, scary, funny, and sad things happened.  But one of the most important parts was when Leslie went to Terabithia along one day.  She was swinging on a rope above a creek and fell. The creek was very deep and dangerous.  Leslie was a great swimmer, but she hit her head on something when she fell into the water and died. 

      Jesse was very sad.  He threw all of the things she ever gave him into the creek, and was often too tired to do much.  But Jesse made it through that bad situation, and was okay.  This was a very touching story, and I highly recommend it to anyone.  Now I know that whatever happens, happens, and that is just how life works.  It doesn’t matter if it is a death or sickness or any other thing.  We can’t just stop our lives because of that bump in the road, because around the corner may be something great and wonderful!  When things happen to me if I get older, I will always think of this book, and how Jesse just kept going, even though a terrible thing happened to him.  He knew there was always tomorrow.

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