Greatest Characters Ever Written 13

"Leslie Burke" ; 1977 ; Katherine Paterson

The first heroine to steal and break this young, budding story enthusiast's heart.

I still sometimes gets mad at my third grade teacher for reading us this novel; however, after I think about how I cried my eyes out, sobbing audibly in class, tears literally streaming down my chubby cheeks, when she read the climax of this novel, I realize I would probably have been much more embarrassed if my fifth or sixth grade teacher read this to us! But maybe not...or maybe because of this experience, being introduced to the beauty and wonder of Leslie Burke at such a young age, I've been forever able to express pure and honest grief and loss when my heart is so afflicted...I don't know...but every time I reread this novel, or even now as I'm writing this short tribute to one of the most influential characters in my life, I bawl like a two-year-old whose ice cream scoop plummets from its home at the top of the cone, forever lost on the pavement, melting...

When I heard the movie makers announce plans to compress this complicated young adult novel into a two hour time frame (although PBS also tried in 1985), I knew I couldn't go to the theaters to see it: Not because I would be embarrassed to cry in front of strangers, but because I was afraid of changing (or damaging) the image of Leslie I had created in my head after the first time she came into my life. Ultimately, I did see the movie on DVD at home and although it is a well-done, well-acted, and a magnificent version of Miss Paterson's story, it didn't come close to eliciting the emotion the novel yanked from me after my teacher's first reading and each rereading thereafter. Now, I'm not saying the movie is not worth your time, just different. It did follow the story almost exactly, but even if it turned out to be the greatest movie I've ever seen, it would never top me sitting in my third grade classroom, waiting for the clock to turn to 1:20 pm so my teacher would read ten minutes of Leslie's life to us in her beautiful voice; I remember the day I cried so vividly still, but the whole experience of waiting to hear her read and getting to know Leslie, wishing she would come to my school, just knowing she would become my best friend, will forever be more valuable to me than any reproduction of this beloved novel.

I also do not want to devalue Miss AnnaSophia Robb's performance as Leslie, and I surely do not want to criticize her portrayal simply because I pictured Leslie as a brown-haired princess, but my favorite version of Leslie will always be in my head, inside the pages of her novel, inside my heart.