Will I love Tuck Everlasting?

So, this book was made into two movies, the first in 1981 and the other in 2002, but I first experienced this story by reading the book when I was a young girl in sixth grade in 1978. I remember reading the epilogue over and over again—it broke my heart to think how the greed of one man could ruin something so magical. I pondered whether it was a blessing or a curse to live forever, and the town of Treegap felt like it could exist in any wooded place. Whenever I find myself in a thick forest, I still… show more.

The secret space in Tuck Everlasting is a fenced-off wood owned by the wealthy Foster family. When ten-year-old Winnie meanders into the woods one day, she stumbles upon Jesse Tuck—and a secret she wasn’t supposed to know about. A lovely, short read to get lost in. I love the fantasy twist in this period piece. The mystery element combined with the natural setting was a huge influence on my own writing. Skip the movie and read the book first!

Exploring the woods near her home, ten-year-old Winnie meets a teenager named Jesse Tuck as he drinks from a bubbling spring. Jesse’s family is carefree, like none Winnie has ever met, but they’re also strange, staying hidden away from the rest of the town. Winnie learns their secret comes from the spring: Its water offers everlasting life to anyone who drinks it.

I first read this book years ago and revisited it while writing Miraculous. It examines interesting questions (much like The Wish Giver): What makes life meaningful? What if we could change our “dissatisfying” lives — would… show more.

This deceptively simple story, set in a small nineteenth-century town, explores one of the deepest thought experiments I can imagine: the prospect of earthly immortality. A little bit fairy tale, a little bit love story, Tuck Everlasting examines what it might really mean, in all its quotidian elements, to live forever.

I didn’t discover this novel until my kids were assigned to read it in fifth grade. Their classwork culminated in a day at our county courthouse, where the students held a mock trial for Mae Tuck, a character in the book who accidentally kills a man. Let me tell… show more.