I wasn't sure at first that this book would work as a movie, for a couple of reasons. 1) The book is largely focused on Jess's internal journey. It's a story of recognizing possibility, of embracing your creativity in a world that demands you become more practical. 2) It's a little dated. While the central barrier to Jess's dreams is poverty, we also see some political issues. There's mild racism and sexism, radical politics. In modernizing the story for the movie, they had to modernize Leslie's differences. She's more quirky than enlightened. The bigger difference is the portrayal of Terabithia. In the novel, we're mostly just told that Jess and Leslie imagine an involved world out in the woods. The movie presents us with several scenes in which this imagined world is almost real, to the point that it borders on delusion. Over all, the tweaks that modernize the story work well and make the movie accessible while remaining true to the intent of the original story.
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