Author Spotlight: Katherine Paterson
Katherine Paterson is the author of the highly acclaimed and the highly challenged children’s novel, Bridge to Terabithia. She won multiple awards for her body of work, including the Newbery Medal and the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
Paterson was born in China in 1932. Both her parents were Christian missionaries who traveled throughout China as part of their missionary duties. Paterson grew up immersed in Chinese culture and with Chinese as her first language. This made it hard for her to read and write in English. However, when they returned to the United States permanently in 1950, Paterson found a way to overcome these challenges. She ended up graduating summa cum laude with a degree in English from King College in Bristol, Tennessee.
After teaching for a year at a local elementary school in Virginia, Paterson pursued graduate studies and earned a master’s degree in Bible and Christian education from the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia. She intended to return to China to do missionary work, but at the time, China was closed to the West, so she went to Japan instead.
Professionally, Paterson taught Sunday school for fifth and sixth grade. However, around this time, she was also taking a liking to writing. Her first book, Who Am I?, is a religious Christian education book. Paterson also wrote various manuscripts. When no publisher would accept her work, she was convinced to take an adult creative writing course. This helped her publish her first novel, The Sign of the Chrysanthemum, in 1973.
The Sign of the Chrysanthemum is set in 12th-century Japan. It tells the story of a 14-year-old girl named Muna, who searches for her father after her mother passes away.
This first book was followed by many more, and soon, Paterson established herself as a prolific writer for children and young adults. Her most widely read work, Bridge to Terabithia, was published in 1977. The book tells the story of two children named Jesse and Leslie. Jesse is an artistic young boy born into a poor family with many children. Leslie, on the other hand, is quite the opposite: she’s the only child born to a rich couple. The two become friends when they become neighbors, and later on they share the imaginary kingdom of Terabithia with each other.
Paterson eventually became known for writing youthful characters facing difficult challenges that are not common to their age, including death, jealousy, and misery. This, of course, didn’t sit well with some parents. Bridge to Terabithia is one of the most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000. Simultaneously, the book is also being studied in classrooms not only in the United States but also in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK.
Other than novels, Paterson also adapted Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck into a play. The show opened at a conference of the Beatrix Potter Society in Fresno, California, in 2009.
Paterson has received multiple accolades for her body of work, including a Hans Christian Andersen Award, a Regina Medal from the Catholic Library Association, and a New England Book Award. She has been declared a Living Legend by the Library of Congress in 2000 and a Literary Light by the Boston Public Library in 2000. In 2013, she was awarded the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which is given specifically to children’s authors.
Today, Paterson lives in Vermont and still visits schools from time to time.
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