Tuck Everlasting
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| Tuck Everlasting | |
| house | |
| Author | Natalie Babbitt |
|---|---|
| Translator | french |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Language Arts |
| Genre(s) | Children's book, Fantasy |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) |
| Publication date | 1975 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 106 pdsfres |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-374-48009-5 |
Tuck Everlasting is a fantasy children's novel with magical realism, written by Natalie Babbitt and published in 1975. The book explores the concept of immortality and the reasons why it might not be as beneficial as it appears at first glance. Ten-year-old Winnie Foster is "kidnapped" by the Tucks while being observed by the man in the yellow suit. Living with the Tucks, Winnie becomes used to their easy going way of life and develops a crush on Jesse, the Tucks' youngest son. He attempts to persuade Winnie to drink from the spring he was seen drinking out of earlier when she turns seventeen (same age as he is), which grants the drinker an everlasting life so she could stay with him forever and even suggests they get married. However, Jesse's father, Angus, warns her against it, explaining that it disrupts the natural cycle of life. He also admits that he wants to "live again" as a changing human and not be mired in time like "a rowboat stuck in the branches of a fallen tree", presenting Winnie with a moral conundrum.
Winnie's idyllic life with the Tucks is suddenly disrupted when the Tucks are discovered by a man wearing a yellow suit. The man reveals that he has been searching for an immortal family that was described by an apparently senile old woman - who turns out to be Miles' former wife. Discovering that Winnie has run away into the woods, he uses the information to obtain the Fosters' land claim to the part of the woods containing the spring in exchange for Winnie's return. The man demands that the Tucks cover the location of the spring, but they instead assault him, with Mae dealing him a fatal blow to the head with the end of the gun Angus Tuck shot himself with just as the town constable arrived at the scene. They sentence Mae to death, but Winnie and the Tucks plan to rescue her. Since the Tucks wouldn't die when hung, people would find out their secret.
Winnie is reunited with her family and learns that Mae is in jail for murdering the man in the yellow suit and the plans are that they are to be hanged, ultimately revealing their secret. She takes Mae's place in jail and helps them escape to another town. Jesse asks Winnie to run away with them, but she declines fearing that her family would persecute them all. Jesse gives Winnie a bottle of water to drink from the spring, vowing they will find her, no matter where she is.
A few days later, Winnie finds a toad fleeing from a neighbor's dog. Instead of drinking the water herself, she decides to pour it onto the toad, deciding that there would be some more in the spring anyway. Many years pass before the Tuck family arrives to Winnie's. On their return, they learn that Winnie had chosen not to drink the water after all and died at the age of seventy-eight (1870-1948). As the Tucks are about to move on, a toad hops onto the road and nearly gets squished by a truck. Angus stops his carriage and waits for the toad to move; when it doesn't, he comments that the toad must have thought it would live forever.
