It was a book, to be frank, that I shied away from, as a kid. As a kid, I wanted real fantasy. What that means is, I wanted fantasy where the astonishing worlds the characters go to are tangible, and the monsters they fight draw blood, and the heroes they become reach that status because they defied death, not because they surrendered to it.

I remember sitting in front of the TV and watching the trailer for this movie where a sad-looking dark-haired boy meets a shimmering golden-haired girl and together they go on an adventure into a land called Terabithia, where the trees walk like giants. I liked Narnia, then, as well as The Lord of the Rings and Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain and Harry Potter and a bevy of suchlike tales, and I was intrigued by Terabithia because the trailer’s images reminded me of them.

And I clearly remember being disappointed when I learned about the book that the movie was based on, and about how Terabithia wasn’t, in fact, “real.” Terabithia was just a place imagined by the children. I remember being disappointed, and also, in a way, betrayed: what kind of children’s author would dress up their story as something it wasn’t? Who’d strangle the fantasy in its crib and then morbidly parade it around like an effigy? […]