This story by Tom Mckone was first published in The Bridge on June 18.
Katherine Paterson is sitting in her Montpelier living room, doing what she does best — telling stories. Unlike the fiction she writes for children and young people, she recalls a true story about a furious woman who confronted her at a meeting.
“These books are not for children,” the woman said. “They’re too intense.”
But intensity and her refusal to write down to children are two qualities that have made Paterson a great writer. She has published more than 40 books, and she’s won even more awards than that, including two National Book Awards and two Newberry Medals. The Library of Congress named her a living legend, and she is one of only six Americans who have won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition given to an author or illustrator of children’s books.
In awarding Paterson the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and in citing “Bridge to Terabithia” in particular, the American Library Association said, “Paterson’s unflinching yet redemptive treatment of tragedy and loss helped pave the way for ever more realistic writing for young people.”
“I received a letter from a teacher who enclosed the book report of ‘the bad boy’ in her class, who had read ‘The Great Gilly Hopkins,’” Paterson says. “He said, ‘This book is a miracle.’ Miss Paterson knows exactly how children feel.”
“I carry my child self around with me all the time,” she says. “A lot of people don’t remember how intensely they felt as children.”
Asked about her favorite Paterson book, Jane Knight, children’s book buyer at Bear Pond Books, selected the same book that the challenging student wrote about.
“Gilly was the first character in whom I could recognize myself — both my inner and outer selves,” Knight said, “someone who could be mean and crabby and full of great sorrow and longing, and also someone who could grow and change. Gilly gave me the agency and permission to be a whole human, warts and all.”
“The Day of the Pelican” and “Bread and Roses, Too,” are past Vermont Humanities Vermont Reads selections, and “Lyddie” and “Jacob Have I Loved” are perpetual favorites. However, the most popular remains, hands-down, “Bridge to Terabithia,” Paterson’s 1977 novel about two best friends, the imaginary world they create, and the tragedy one of them has to deal with.
The book has been translated into more than 25 languages, and the publishers have lost track of how many copies have been sold; Paterson says it’s “in the millions.” A 50th anniversary special edition is scheduled to come out in 2027.
During a talk at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in March, Paterson shared how the death of her son’s friend, who was killed by lightning, sparked the story.
“I was supposed to explain to my kid why his best friend had died,” she said. “I couldn’t explain it to myself — how such a terrible tragedy could happen to this bright, funny child. But I know a story has to make sense. I began to write this story to try to make sense out of something that made no sense to me.”
From China to Japan, and eventually to Vermont
Paterson’s parents — George Raymond Womeldorf and Mary Elizabeth (Goetchius) Womeldorf — were missionaries in China, and that’s where she was born, in 1932. Living in China for most of her first 8 ½ years and growing up bilingual, she was reading in English by the time she was four. She went to two seminaries and did missionary work in Japan.
During a stretch back in the United States, she met her future husband, John Paterson, a minister. Years later he would take a position at a Barre church, and in 1986 they would become Vermonters. After his death in 2013, Paterson moved from the large house they had needed while raising their four children into a smaller place in Montpelier.
Paterson’s Christian faith has always been important to her and to her writing.
“If you’re a person of faith, it’s going to come out in your books somehow or other,” she says during our conversation in her living room. “You don’t put it in. It’s who you are that comes out on the page.”
For many years, “Bridge to Terabithia” was one of the most-often banned books. Those challenging the book objected to Paterson’s treatment of death, religion, and fantasy. Some said the portrayal of some religious families was disrespectful and that the use of the word, “lord,” outside of prayer was sacrilegious. She was accused of promoting secular humanism and atheism.
“People who banned my books were all my Christian brothers and sisters,” she says. “The problem is that they think what I should be doing is writing propaganda, and not a story. Stories are open-ended and there for the reader to interpret if there’s a lesson.”
She says banning her books is no longer a priority, since she is “straight and white,” and book banners now focus on people of color and the LGBTQ+ community.
Life experiences inspire stories
During our interview, she shares many stories, like how seeing a black-and-white photograph on the wall at the Old Labor Hall in Barre led to “Bread and Roses, Too,” the story of the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, during which children were sent out of harm’s way to temporarily live with foster families in Barre.
She says that “Jacob Have I Loved,” which she wrote at a very difficult time in her life, is the book she is most proud of. She wrote it while her mother was dying, her husband was busy with a new job, and their four children were unhappy about a family move. They lived in a small house, so her writing space was an enclosed front porch which was “freezing in winter and boiling in summer.”
While she is grateful for the “richness” of having had loving parents, when she was growing up, she experienced “what it feels like to not have enough money to do the things many people around me were doing.”
Never speechless
At the beginning of Paterson’s memoir, “Stories of My Life,” her fellow writer and longtime friend Nancy Price Graff (who is also a regular columnist for The Bridge) wrote an introduction in which she tells how for many years she and Paterson had weekly lunches at the Wayside on the Barre-Montpelier Road.
“Over the course of our friendship,” she writes, “I have seen Katherine whoop with laughter and I have seen her cry. I have seen her playful, sad, wistful, tired, thoughtful, and most often hopeful and happy, which seems to be her natural disposition. But I have never seen her speechless. Every week there are more stories.”
During Paterson’s talk at the library, she said, “Writers now are much more in touch with children’s feelings, and much more appreciative of the intelligence of children.” What she didn’t mention is that worldwide, she is credited as one of the writers who made that happen.
