Tuck Everlasting
| File:Tuck Everlasting25.png Cover to the 25th anniversary edition | |
| Author | Natalie Babbitt |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Immortality |
| Genre | Children's book, Fantasy |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) |
Publication date | 1975 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 139 pages |
Tuck Everlasting is a fantasy children's novel by Natalie Babbitt. It was published in 1975. The book explores the concept of immortality and the reasons why it might not be as desirable as it appears to be. It has sold over two million copies and has been called a classic of modern children's literature. It has been published as an unabridged audio book three individual times: by Listening Library/Random House in 1988 and narrated by Peter Thomas, by Recorded Books Inc. in 1993 and narrated by Barbara Caruso, and by Audio Bookshelf in 2001 and narrated by Melissa Hughes.
Plot
Winnie Foster comes from a well-bred and strait-laced family who keep her safe behind a four-foot iron fence that surrounds their home. She lives a life of boredom and frustration. They are the oldest family in the town, and own the surrounding woods. When running away from her confinement and into the woods one morning, she finds a beautiful tree from which a spring of water pours, with a teenage boy - almost a young man - drinking from it. This discovery leads her to learn of the Tuck family - the boy named Jesse Tuck and the rest of his family (Mae Tuck, Angus Tuck, and his brother Miles) - who are immortal from drinking from this spring eighty-seven years earlier. The family decides it best to take Winnie away with them to explain the secret and why it must be kept - but all the while, a man in a yellow suit has been watching. He has come to the town in hopes of finding the spring (which he had heard of through stories told by his grandmother) and selling it to certain people for an incredibly high price. He uses this supposed kidnapping of Winnie to define the Tucks as brutes, and uses it to his advantage in order to persuade the Fosters to sign the contract entitling him to buy the Fosters' forest.
Meanwhile, the Tucks introduce Winnie to their strange limbo existence and she grows to love them like the family and friends she never truly had. They are affectionate, with nearly no apparent rules, and live humbly in the woods 20 miles from town. They teach her why unleashing immortality upon the world would disrupt the balance of life, throwing human beings out of the great cycle of life and death and turning them into "rocks on the side of the road." Their brief time together is ended when the man in the yellow suit confronts the family, whom he has tracked to their home after the "abduction." After hearing his plan, Mae Tuck takes out a shotgun and hits him in the back of his head with the stock, from which blow he eventually dies. The constable, who has followed the man, sees only Mae's assault, not the man in the suit's plans to use the Tucks as sideshow freaks. Mae is incarcerated in the newly built jail and will be hanged, but since she cannot die, her date with the gallows will reveal the Tucks' secret to the world. Jesse then gives Winnie a bottle of the spring water, and tells her to drink it when she turns 17, as he has asked her to live and travel the world with him, or even get married. Meeting the family by the jailhouse the night before Mae's "execution," the boys open the jailbars and Winnie takes the place of Mae in the cell. They then escape, while Winnie is found in the cell the next day. She gets into trouble for helping the Tucks escape, but the secret is safe.
At the end, it is revealed that Winnie has died two years before the Tucks returned to the town in the 1950s seeking to find her. They also discover that Foster Forest had been destroyed by lightning hitting a tree and the wood burning down, effectively hiding the spring, and also that it had been plowed over. So the Tucks carry on.
The novel ultimately puts up an argument for mortality, and why it is necessary, by using the Tucks as a counterexample. (See Tennyson's poem Tithonus as another example of the problems of eternal life.)
Awards
The novel was selected as an ALA Notable Book as well as being included on the Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List.It has received numerous awards since its publication including the Janusz Korczak Medal and the 1976 Christopher Award for Best Book for Young People. It was included in Anita Silvey's book The 100 Best Books For Children.
Adaptations
The novel has twice been adapted to film. The first was released in 1981 and distributed by One Pass Media. The second was by Disney in 2002. It was directed by Jay Russell and starred Alexis Bledel as Winnie, Jonathan Jackson as Jesse, and William Hurt and Sissy Spacek as his parents. It received mixed, but generally favorable reviews and currently holds a 61% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. The New York Post praised it as "handsomely crafted and well-acted".[1] It grossed a little over $19 million at the domestic box office and did not receive a wide-release in foreign territories.
References
- ^ Lou Lumineck. "New York Post film review". Retrieved 2008-09-05.