I recommend this book for older children who are ready to contemplate the issues of life and death, but who can still appreciate fantasy (It's not one of those depressing my-best-friend-died-and-it's-all-my-fault-Betsy-Byers-type books, thank goodness!). But I also highly recommend it to adults. It just might help you consider the magic of life that adults so often dismiss as childish impossibility.


Living forever without saying goodbye...without living   August 25, 2002
 20 out of 21 found this review helpful

Tuck Everlasting holds more power than it looks like it does. A lot of kids these days are forced to read these on the torturesome summer reading lists etc. so may not appreciate it, but for anyone with a free afternoon, try this story. It's a beautifully, masterfully crafted piece of literature. It's quiet and atmospheric, and beneath the beauty and innocence presented of a Victorian world and a children's book, is foreboding and rather heartbreaking.

We're presented with the Tuck family, who have been blessed, or cursed, with eternal life or immortality. And where they could be enjoying themselves profusely, the ever wise Tucks realize they hold a somewhat terrible secret that could be if found out by the general populace, as Babbit so deftly describes, one of the worst things that could happen to the world. So when Winnie Foster stumbles into their world and onto their secret, they take her away to convince her not to tell anyone else. They win her over, and they win us over, so that the ending of the book is a bittersweet one, and yet mysteriously neverending as well.

The various characters also convince us in the importance and righteousness of their resolve, and take us along on the whilrwhind chain of events and adventures that occur within a few short days. You end up believing them, and you start to see the great responsibility and wonder these people have forced on them. It helps create the mystery over the story from the first few pages, a mystery with a very pitifully human core, with which we are presented.

Babbit tells the whole story simply without extraneous elaboration or description. She leaves a lot unanswered on purpose, which serves in the simplicity and profundity of the tale. She allows us to think about the characters, actually think about the consequences and curiosities and sorrows of what living forever might entail, but ultimately allowing us to decide if we would want to live forever here on Earth in the first place.


A teacher's thoughts.... spoilers   May 10, 2007
 20 out of 33 found this review helpful

Just finished the first half the book with my class of sixth graders, and then returned the book set back into the library after a discussion with my class. In that discussion a number of disturping facets of the story were brought up...
1. The main character is a 10 year old girl who is kidnapped by the Tucks because they believe she might learn their secret. These kidnappers end up becoming her friends. Our children do not, ever, need to be sent the message that kidnappers are nice people only doing it to protect you and really just want to be your friends. There are far to many sick freaks out there that target children for us to send this message.
2. One of the kidnappers (Jessie Tuck) falls in love with Winnie and asks her to marry him and become immortal. Winnie is TEN years old and Jesse while looking 17 is in fact over 100 years old. My students told me this part of the story was just "creepy".
3. The Tucks murder a man who comes to take Winnie away, they say they do it to protect Winnie from the curse of immortality as a child...but refer back to item #2 to see that this is Jesse Tuck's plan. This murder is seen as the right thing to do and is said so by the author.
4. The character of Jesse is said to be unable to do anything wrong because he is handsome. Young teens have enough problems with body image without having a "classic of children's literature" tell them that only the beautiful people are good at heart. This is the same clap-trap that leads our teenage girls to hate themselves and hold themselves as worthless becuase they do not measure up to the women in magazines.
5. Lastly, the story is intensly boring.


Tuck Everlasting   March 30, 2005
 18 out of 18 found this review helpful

Geared toward the middle grades, Tuck Everlasting is a modern fantasy novel that has characters that can easily be identified with, even if they can never die. The book is an easy read with a plot that keeps readers in suspense and wanting to know more. The overall theme that life is a wheel and should move on, teaches us that death is part of the journey and to not take living for granted.


Tuck Everlasting really is a remarkable fiction story   November 10, 1999
 17 out of 20 found this review helpful

Tuck everlasting, an interesting book, was one of may favorite books that I have read this year. This book has wonderful suspense, like the man in the yellow suit, Natalie Babbit never gives his name. This book is all about a ten-year-old girl, Winnie, who runs away from her misery at home. Thirsty and tired in the woods next to her house, she sees a boy drinking from a spring and wants to drink some water. Kidnapped and surprised, she is a true hero when she rescues Mae Tuck from jail on a stormy night. This book is truly a sensation and will give readers an imagination of what it would be like to be the Tucks, the Everlasting Tucks.