Bibliographic Information


Babbitt, N. (1975). Tuck everlasting. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.

ISBN:0-440-84095-3

 

Plot Summary

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt is the story Winifred “Winnie” Foster and her life in the small town of Treegap, New Hampshire. Winnie lives with her father, mother, and grandmother in the woods outside of town. She spends her days dreaming of a better life and feeling restricted by the one she has. One day Winnie runs away and heads deep into the Treegap forest. She comes across an older boy drinking water from a small spring. The boy sees her and at first he seems alarmed, but he softens as they talk. Winnie learns that his name is Jesse Tuck and that many years ago his family drank from this spring and it gave them eternal life. They are now forever stuck in time exactly as they are. Winnie finds herself slowly becoming a part of their world and even finds herself falling in love with Jesse. Unfortunately for Winnie and the Tuck family immortality is not everything. What little time she has with them will be filled with joy, heartache, death, murder, kidnapping, love, and loss. Winnie will have to decide if she wants to drink the water and live forever or live the life she already has. 

 

Critical Evaluation


The characters throughout Tuck Everlasting are presented with questions about mortality and would you live forever if you could. This was on purpose, because the story was not necessarily about the magic of living forever, but the implications of living forever. Tuck Everlasting was considered fantasy, but did not carry common themes found in high fantasy books by popular authors of that time period, such as Lloyd Alexander or Ursula K. Le Guin. The book felt more realistic as it questioned societal values about love, life, and mortality. Tuck Everlasting reads similar to a contemporary or realistic book.  Everything from the 1881 setting, to the clothes, and conversations are presented as realistic to the time period.  Winnie wears boots, stockings and dresses. While other characters like Jesse wear simple white shirts and brown pants. The book talks about the Tuck family driving a horse pulled wooden wagon and the Foster family even lives in a cottage in the woods. All of these elements and characters provide a visual for the people and the small rural town of Treegap, New Hampshire in 1881.

 

Tuck Everlasting is a book that youth today can still find value and meaning in. The story captures the feeling and essence of growing up. The story isn’t about the adults questioning mortality, but rather it is about the youth in the story asking those questions. Tuck Everlasting addresses themes of death, coming of age, mortality, and the human existence. I find that as an adult that I even love the book for the world Babbitt carefully crafted and created. Tuck Everlasting takes readers on a journey that requires them think about their life choices and how they would act when faced with adversity.

 

Reader’s Annotation


If you could live forever exactly as you are, would you? That is the choice Winnie Foster must make, to live eternally as she is or to live the life that she has.

 

Author Information

The following information was taken from the author’s website,

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1954.Natalie_Babbitt.

 

“Natalie Babbitt was born Natalie Zane Moore on July 28, 1932, in Dayton, Ohio. She attended Laurel School for Girls, and then Smith College. She has 3 children and is married to Samuel Fisher Babbitt. She is a grandmother of 3 and lives in Rhode Island. She is also a board member of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance a national not-for-profit that actively advocates for literacy, literature, and libraries.”

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The following information was taken from the author’s website,

http://www.ipl.org/div/askauthor/babbitt.html.

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"Natalie Babbitt was born and grew up in Ohio. She spent large amounts of time in those early years reading fairy tales and myths, and drawing. Her mother, an amatuer landscape and portrait painter, provided early art lessons an saw to it that there was always enough paper, paint, pencils, and encouragement. In those days, Mrs. Babbitt wanted only to be an illustrator, and went on to specialize in art at Laurel School in Cleveland and at Smith College. She married Samuel Fisher Babbitt, an academic administrator, right after graduation, and spent the next ten years in Connecticut, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., raising Christopher (born in 1956), Tom (1958), and Lucy (1960). She and her husband decided to collaborate on a children's book, The Forty-Ninth Magician (Pantheon, 1966), and then came another move, this time to Clinton, New York, where Mr. Babbitt became the first president of Kirkland College, the women's college coordinate to Hamilton College for men. Finding herself without a writer--college presidents are very busy people--Natalie Babbitt decided to try becoming her own author; and now finds that though she still enjoys illustrating, writing provides an equal challenge and is equally satisfying. 

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Believing in the beginning that she would do best with rhyme, Mrs. Babbitt wrote her first two books, Dick Foote and the Shark and Phoebe's Revolt, in verse. But The Search for Delicious could only be written in prose; it is a long story which has its roots in all the fairy tales she read as a child. After this came Kneeknock Rise (the reader must decide whether this one is a fantasy or not) and Goody Hall, both novels. The Something, a picture book for young readers, came in between, and the author freely admits that it grew out of her healthy distaste for the dark. Since that time, Natalie Babbitt has illustrated five books for Valerie Worth. Four of them are poetry books and have been published together in a paperback edition, All the Small Poems. Mrs. Babbitt has written and illustrated two books of stories about the devil called The Devil's Storybook and The Devil's Other Storybook. Between these came three novels: the modern classic Tuck Everlasting, which explores the possibility that endless life may be more of a curse than a blessing; a seashore fantasy, which is really a love story, called The Eyes of the Amaryllis; and Herbert Rowbarge, hailed by PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY as "her crowning achievement". The story of a man who never knows he has a twin brother, it is the ironic and moving depiction of a life ruled by an inexplicable sense of loss."

 

Genre

Fiction, Fantasy, Romance

 

Curriculum Ties


Could be used for lessons on life, death, immortality, love, family and friendship.

 

Booktalking Ideas


• Would you have chosen to the same things as Winnie? Why or Why not?

• Why do you think Winnie choose to live her life?

 

Reading Level/ Interest Age


Grades 6-10

Interest Age 10 -16

 

Challenge Issues


Violence and Religious messages

 

Challenge Issue Resources (for usage in a challenge situation)

• Active Listening

• Explanation of why it was chosen for the collection (Rational)

• Awards

• Reader Advisory Reviews (Students, Parents, Educators)

• Positive and Negative Reviews

• National Council of Teachers “Right to Read”

• ALA Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to Library Materials

• ALA Bill of Rights on Intellectual Freedom

• Library Selection Policy & Library District Reconsideration Form

 

Why I choose it

I choose to read this book because it talks about immortality, life, and death in a way that is recognizable to teens.