Bridge to Terabithia true story: who the real Leslie was

Bridge to Terabithia is Paterson's 1977 novel about Jess Aarons, a farm boy in rural Virginia, and Leslie Burke, the new girl who moves in next door. Together they invent Terabithia, a secret kingdom in the woods across a creek, reached by a rope swing. The book won the Newbery Medal in 1978, became a PBS TV movie in 1985, and a Disney film in 2007, with Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb. It's also one of the most challenged books in American schools, partly because of how it ends: Leslie dies.

Lisa Hill

The real Leslie was Lisa Hill, the best friend of Paterson's son David. They went to Takoma Park Elementary in Takoma Park, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., and spent their time at Rock Creek, which turned into the book's creek.

"It grew out of a friendship which my son David had with a little girl named Lisa Hill," Paterson told NPR in 2007. Years later, she described Lisa to the network in one breath.

"She was bright and she was funny and she was athletic and she was a wonderful kid."

The athletic part made it onto the page. The first thing Leslie does in the book is enter the recess race Jess has trained all summer for, and beat every boy in it, Jess included.

What happened in 1974

On August 14, 1974, eight-year-old Lisa was struck by lightning and killed at Bethany Beach, Delaware.

"She was his very best friend in the world," Paterson told NPR, and her death was "a very, very traumatic experience for all of us, and especially for David."

Paterson started writing to cope. "I began to try to make sense out of something that made no sense to me whatsoever," she said.

Why Leslie doesn't die by lightning

The book began at a meeting of the Children's Book Guild of Washington the following year. Someone asked how her children were doing. "Instead of saying they were fine, I began to blubber out everything that was not fine," Paterson recalled.

A fellow guild member told her to write it down, with one condition: "the child can't die by lightning because no editor would ever believe that."

So the novel trades the storm for the creek. After days of rain, Jess goes to Washington with his music teacher, Miss Edmunds, to see the National Gallery of Art. Leslie heads to Terabithia alone, the rope swing snaps, and she falls into the flooded creek and dies. Lisa didn't die in a creek.

"I can't make sense of Lisa's death, but the story has to make sense."

When David read the draft, he had just one request. "He wanted it to be dedicated to Lisa as well as to him," his mother said. The book is dedicated to both of them.

Is Jess really David?

Not exactly, according to David. Like Jess, he loved running and drawing and kept to himself at school, but he lived in the suburbs, not on a farm. And he gives the credit for the hero elsewhere.

"Jesse Aarons is my mother," David told NPR. "You can put as many comparisons as you want, but in the end it's a book my mother wrote."

Don't miss: Bridge to Terabithia's ending explained: the death in it happened for real, to an eight-year-old

He wasn't always comfortable with the fame. "I was a little ashamed because here's this notoriety from something that was very personal and painful," he said.

"It's like someone saying you have a really cool scar."

David's movie

David grew up to be a playwright and screenwriter, and he spent years trying to get the book filmed himself. "I have been trying to make this film for some 17 years, because of a lot of no's," he said.

He finally co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Stockwell and produced the film, which Gábor Csupó directed in New Zealand. Bridge to Terabithia opened on February 16, 2007, with AnnaSophia Robb as Leslie, and grossed $137.6 million worldwide. David wrote it as a tribute to Lisa.

The trailers sold it as a fantasy adventure, which David pushed back on. "Give me a little leeway and respect," he said.

For the record: two years before the movie came out, a maple tree was planted near Takoma Park Elementary in Lisa Hill's memory.

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