This powerful adaptation focuses the humor, warmth and emotional intensity of Katherine Paterson’s Newbery Award-winning novel to create a stage work of dramatic impact. Jesse Aarons, alienated from the pragmatism of family and rural Virginia culture, draws and dreams of becoming something special – for now the fastest runner in the fifth grade. Leslie Burk, the new girl from the city and an ultimate outsider, beats him at running and then opens for him a larger world of imagination, art and literature. Together they create Terabithia, a fantasy kingdom where they are safe from those who do not understand them, and where their friendship grows as Jesse’s world expands. When tragedy strikes, it is the strength he has gained in Terabithia that takes Jesse forward on his own and lets him share the magic and the dreams with others.