Bridge to Terabithia Response

Well overall rereading my childhood favorite helped me not just refresh my mind about little details I missed when I first read this book, but it also helped me really think deeper about me book and understand what big ideas and themes came up throughout the entire book.
  One idea I was having was that Terabithia not only represents a magical world created by Jess and Leslie, but it also represents escape and freedom. In the book, when Jess and Leslie have a problem with their lives, they go to Terabithia to create new creatures of Terabithia. These creatures each represent someone or something from their lives. In Terabithia, no one tells them what's wrong or what's right. That brings me to another theme I found while rereading this book; friendship.
  Friendship is a huge theme in this book because if Jess and Leslie hadn't become friends then who knows how this story might've end up sounding like. The really strong bond between Jess and Leslie just keeps growing and growing and we witness that throughout the book. Any child might say that they feel a lot closer to their friends than to their parents due to the fact that adults would just say, "Hey, that's wrong" or they would try to solve the kid's problem. But a friend doesn't judge you by being wrong or right and if you're ever in trouble, that friend or those friends would find a way to bring you back to their world. I think that it's interesting how Leslie is the one with the bold and adventurous personality. It just makes me happy to see how Leslie doesn't believe in stereotypes like, oh, sports are just for boys. She raced in the heat (heat meaning the match not heat like heat caused by the sun) not caring that only boys were racing.
  One question I had when reading the book was that why did Katherine Paterson choose to have Leslie die, knowing that this book was being read by millions of young readers in elementary school? I guess I can kinda sorta maybe answer that question. When I read the biography about Katherine Paterson we had to print out for homework it said that writing about really sad, depressing moments made her sad as well. But she said that she wrote them because in a way writing about the not so nice side of reality helped her mature and get ready for moments like those that might jump at her at any moment. I guess she decided to include death as a theme to kind of help prepare/teach young readers that reality isn't just pretty and all full of sunshine; there are dark moments that can come up sooner or later in their lives. 
  What I love about Terabithia is that it really does exist; Terabithia is your own unique way of taking in so much freedom and escaping the world without ever leaving it. The doors of Terabithia were open since the first time I read it and I realized that they hadn't closed on me, I just wasn't looking hard enough... I think that that's the true key to unlocking Terabithia.