Review: Tuck Everlasting


Tuck Everlasting is a curious tale about a disaffected ten-year-old who although supremely obedient, rebels inwardly against her family's strict disciplinary ways. Winnie Foster lives in a cottage on the fringe of a mysterious wood. She is forbidden to enter it although it has belonged in her family for years. In defiance, Winnie spends more of her days than she ought to sitting by the locked gate communing with a very non-communicative toad until one day she decides to run away.

The woods seem the obvious choice to begin a new life free of restrictions but Winnie's conviction cracks as she considers all the dangers she's ever been warned about and how they might befall her. Disgusted with by her cowardice, Winnie makes a pact with herself to visit the wood for the day and if she should decide to stay forever, then she needn't ever return.

The wood is cool and indifferent, not at all sinister and bleak as she'd imagined but when Winnie stumbles upon a clearing and meets a mother and her two grown sons, her world is instantly turned on its head. For one, she is taken by them. But the acquisition of Winnie by the Tuck family is not the crime it seems, rather it's Winnie's salvation.

This classic parable asks the timeless question: who wants to live forever? Is immortality the penultimate state of existence or a curse to be avoided at all costs? For the Tucks who happen to be older than the woods themselves, the answer is obvious and they do their utmost to convince young Winnie that love and happiness may still be richly experienced even for a finite amount of time.

The Tucks are the family Winnie has always dreamed about. They are warm and untidy, industrious and kind, resourceful and enduring. She experiences a profound contentment when with them and wishes she could stay. But even with the promise of the fountain of youth, some things simply cannot stay forever.

Nearly every child on the planet has entertained notions of running away for one reason or another. How they enact these thoughts helps define their emotional plasticity. For Winnie the outcome of her desires exposed her to a whole new way of viewing the world and those in it. In a short space of time she learnt to think beyond her own shortfalls and understand what compassion, loyalty and true courage really looked like. Not only that, she harnessed these new traits with absolute positive action.

Tuck Everlasting will satisfy fantasy lovers aged 7 and above with its magical undercurrents, occasional high drama and poignant conclusion in a way that may just last longer than the Tucks themselves. An endearing classic.

Title: Tuck Everlasting
Author: Natalie Babbitt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children’s Books, $14.99
Publication Date: 2 July 2020 (first published in 1975)
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781526615251
For ages: 7+
Type: Middle Grade Fiction Junior Fiction for older readers

Buy the Book: Bloomsbury Children’s Books Australia, Boomerang Books, Booktopia


Comments

Norah Colvin said…
This book has got to be a winner with every child who feels they don't belong and dreams of running away. As you say, isn't that the child in all of us?
3 August 2020 at 20:21
DimbutNice said…
Indeed it is, Norah. Indeed it is... me included. :-)
3 August 2020 at 21:53
Kenneth said…
Keep posting articles like this one , good job ,you may be interested in this article: destiny 2 a small gift.
13 August 2020 at 03:52
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Goldfish Boy

Image
Twelve-year-old Matthew Corbin is your regular pre-teen boy living in an unspectacular cul-de-sac deep in British suburbia. The major difference between him and the other inhabitants of Chestnut Close however is the state of his red-raw hands and tortured mind and the fact that he barely steps outside his terraced-home second story bedroom. Matthew is afflicted with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD and can barely function as a result. From his fishbowl vantage point, Matthew keeps track of his neighbours, dutifully recording their every movement, their comings and goings, and their habitual rituals in his notebooks. In this way we are introduced to the residents and their characteristic irks and quirks from the get go in a way that is both intriguing and comical. Matthew’s observations allude to his condition; he is both analytical and detailed in his approach. The orderliness of his notations suggest a mind used to repetition and accuracy, an intense desire to ‘get things r
Read more

Review: Detention

Image
Tristan Bancks signed my copy of Detention with a note hoping it kept me turning pages . This book lived up to that promise and then some. Packed with page-turning tension and relentless drama, this is one middle grade novel that may cause a few kids to miss their dinner call. Yet despite the raw gritty urgency that suffuses nearly every page and the elevated sense of dread and desperation that keeps your heart in top gear, the pace is never too manic nor too hectic to enjoy the energising mix of edgy excitement and sincere emotion Bancks does so well. Dan is an inner suburban boy living on the outer perimeters of life. He’s classified as trailer park trash because of his permanent residence at the social-economically deprived Midgenba caravan park. It’s a title that comes with an ineradicable smear of hopeless. Deep down though, Dan’s a good kid, a caring kid. The type of kid who’ll risk his own face to save a vicious dying dog, which he does one day after finding Rosco tied
Read more

I've got a dream

Image
Almost a decade of moons ago, I made a serendipitous discovery that forever altered the spin of my world. Falling pregnant after so many years of waiting and yearning was nothing short of miraculous (for me) and a life event definitely worth waxing lyrical about. But did I? Sadly, not as much I as wanted to. There are those who find it hard to exist without sharing the contents of their dinner plates with the rest of  the world, then there are others who worry that a beautifully executed birthday cake photo shared on social media will somehow demean the starving populations of the world. I oscillate between the two but tend towards the latter, always fretting over how others will take good news in light of their own current situations and struggles, thus resorting to a severe downplaying of my own good fortune. The pregnancy of my first child should have been a joyous occasion - it was a joyous pregnancy after all - but I was acutely conscious at the time of another family member
Read more