Bridge to Terabithia, written by Katherine Paterson, has the potential of becoming a controversial story to have students in an English class read.  The first, and main issue in my opinion, would be the fact that Leslie dies at the end of the story.  She is one of the main characters within the story, and her death is rather tragic and sudden to readers.  I feel that many elementary students experience death in some way, either a family member, friend, or pet may have died, so I think a majority of students can find themselves relating to Leslie’s death.  On the other hand, some students may be shocked and feel disturbed by having such an intense and dramatic death in a story they are reading for school.  They may not know what to make of it, or understand why it had to happen.  Another strong issue that may come about in discussing this story in the modern age would be the idea of Miss Edmunds taking Jess on a “fieldtrip” with just the two of them.  Would students find this to be appropriate or awkward for both the teacher and student? Obviously in this day and age this type of field trip would be considered inappropriate, but would some students like the idea of it and would they do it if they had a chance.  Another issue would be the frequent discussions about ideas pertaining to religion.  It becomes very risky to discuss religion in classrooms, so would teachers simply ignore those pages and chapters, or would they have to find an appropriate way to discuss the material.  They would have to be careful not to offend anyone in the classroom due to religion being such a sensitive and controversial topic.