If you haven’t read Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt – go do it! It’s a classic of children’s literature, and one of those elevated children’s texts that reads well as an adult – but also it’s short and sweet, which busy adults can appreciate. Not to mention the story is about life and death, and how much life is too much life, and why death is sad but necessary. Evergreen topics, if you will.
Tuck Everlasting is about Winnie, a ten-year-old member of a rather stuffy family that owns an enormous lot of forest land. Feeling overwhelmed by the expectations of her, Winnie decides to run away, spending the day in the wood. At a spring there, she meets the Tuck family, made up of parents Mae and Angus, adult son Miles, and teen son Jesse. When she goes to take a drink from the stream, Jesse warns her away. Alarmed at being found, the Tucks kidnap Winnie and take her to their hidden-away cabin. It turns out that the Tucks drank from that very spring – over eighty years before. The spring granted them (and their horse) immortality, and it’s been an extremely trying time since. They’ve managed to keep their secret, and keep the secret of the spring, but Winnie’s discovery, and a shady old man in town who’s been tracking the Tucks and the spring water for his own means, threaten to upend their long lives and reveal their truth. In the meantime, Winnie and Jesse become friends, and Winnie wonders if everlasting life is something she would like for herself.
I was lucky to know Natalie Babbitt’s husband Sam, a local actor at a theatre I worked at for many years (I met her briefly at their family Christmas party once). I had just started library school, and when I learned what a big deal Natalie was in children’s literature, I quickly hurried to read Tuck, which had escaped me in my youth. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by a very old man, casting which felt inexplicable to me. But he did a great job, and/or the text elevated his performance. I fell in love with the book. The movie starred a tween idol of mine, Jonathan Jackson from General Hospital, and I remember asking Sam about it. He and Natalie hated the movie, which aged up Winnie to a teen, among other changes. Later a musical was made based on the book, and I guess the Babbitt family disliked that too – so I was curious to see the direction of the graphic novel.
Woodman-Maynard and Lucy Babbitt (Natalie’s daughter) have a conversation at the end of the book which shows how much approval the Babbitt estate was contracted this go round, but it also reveals how much trust they had in Woodman-Maynard, and ultimately how much they love this version. I do too. A lot of Babbitt’s original moody text is present in the book, and Woodman-Maynard’s dreamy watercolors are the perfect medium for the quietly powerful story. “The circle of life” is an essential theme to the book, and that plays out nicely in the visuals too – a lot of circular motion at pivotal moments and bookending the chapters. The characterization stays true to the original too.
One of the more interesting parts of the story to consider these days is the character of Jesse, and his proposal to Winnie – literally. He is seventeen, and she is ten, and for the first time, the Tucks have a friend who knows their secret. Jesse pitches that Winnie wait until she too is seventeen, and then drink from the spring – then they can marry, without her growing older while he is in stasis. Normally a seventeen-year-old proposing marriage to a ten year old would give High Ick Alert. But I find it presented very innocently, and removing or changing that would take away a lot of important discussion to have with young readers. It’s vital to the story (and equally vital that Winnie stay a tween, having to make her decision long before a teen romance could cloud her to the choice).
Such a wonderful book to revisit. I think I’m gonna add both the prose and graphic novel to my shelf.
