Tuck+Everlasting

= //Tuck Everlasting// by Natalie Babbitt = Plot: One fateful summer day in 1880, ten year old Winnie Foster has had enough. Enough of her parents' nagging. Enough of their restrictions. And enough of their attentions, no matter how well meant. She runs away into the woods on her parents’ property and meets the very handsome Jesse Tuck drinking from a spring that she’s never seen before. When she goes to take a drink herself, she finds herself unexpectedly kidnapped by Jesse and his family. The well is enchanted. Anyone who drinks from it lives forever, frozen at the age they took their first sip. The Tucks will do anything to keep the secret of the spring safe, even if it means kidnapping an innocent young girl.

Winnie is frightened at first but soon sees her kidnapping as an adventure. The Tucks welcome her into their lives and Winnie discovers a kinship exists between them. They reveal their immortality to her along with the resultant hardships they've suffered. Just when she decides that she will keep their secret, a man in a yellow suit comes, intent on bottling and selling the enchanted spring water. When he reveal his plans to the Tucks, Mae Tuck accidentally kills him. The town sheriff witnesses it and Mae is sent to jail where she is eventually sentenced to hang. Of course, Mae cannot die and so her hanging will reveal the Tucks's secret. Winnie hatches a plot to help them escape and keep the secret of their immortality safe.

Before they leave town, Jesse encourages Winnie to drink from the spring when she’s seventeen. When the Tucks return many years later, they find that Winnie has died after a long life and that the spring has been destroyed in a lightning storm.

Personal Reflections: Years before //Twilight// sparked a veritable vampire frenzy, there was another story about a lonely girl falling in love with a beautiful, immortal boy—//Tuck Everlasting// by Natalie Babbitt. Unlike //Twilight//, //Tuck Everlasting// transcends simple YA romance. It uses the attraction between Winnie and Jesse as a vehicle for raising tough philosophical and moral questions about mortality and human nature. Babbitt thoughtfully explores the temptation immortality represents, ultimately making a moving argument for the necessity of mortality and the circle of human life. Yes, Winnie is initially attracted to the idea of living forever, but Babbitt uses the Tucks to show, not tell, why our mortality is a blessing.

Babbitt is a master storyteller. //Tuck Everlasting// is tightly structured, perfectly paced and beautifully written. Babbitt’s prose is a joy to read. The language moves, the descriptions and characters resonate. I read this novel in my 7th grade English class and it was one of the first books I’d read that felt important. Rereading it, I’m struck by the way it’s clearly a novel for young adults and yet it never talks down to them. It’s not a difficult read but it is complex, and Babbitt trusts her tween readers to respond to this complexity of both thought and imagery.

//Tuck Everlasting// is a classic novel that will appeal to tweens broadly, not just to the fantasy fans.

Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction

Reading Level: Ages 10-14

Movie Adaptations: //Tuck Everlasting// has been adapted for film twice. The first time in 1981 and more recently in 2002.

Awards: American Library Association Notable Children's Books The Janusz Korczak Medal Christopher Awards - Winner Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List

Citation: Babbitt, N. (1975). //Tuck everlasting//. New York, NY: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux