I do feel like the book kind of begs the question of why the Tucks couldn't learn more, grow more, have their sons find girls who would want to live eternally with them. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road."It's an interesting philosophical question: if you had the chance to drink from this fountain, why shouldn't you? Is the downside really as bitter as the Tucks feel it is? How would it affect our world if the word got out? So you can't call it living, what we got. Living's heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it's useless, too. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Tuck tells Winnie: "But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. The Tuck family feels like the wheel has stuck for them-they're like rocks by the side of the road, while all around them people are changing and growing and living and dying. The book is full of circle of life type of imagery: a Ferris wheel pauses in its turning, seasons pass, water drifts downstream to the ocean. All except the younger son, Jesse, who asks Winnie to wait until she's 17, then drink from the fountain and join him in eternal life. The Tuck family takes her away with them for a day or two (which soon leads to some plot complications) while they desperately try to explain to Winnie why they think it's a terrible idea for her to drink from the magical spring herself, or tell anyone else about it. Many years later, a young girl named Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret. In the late 1700's, they drink from a spring of water in a forest that turns out to be a sort of fountain of youth: it makes them immortal, unable to die and permanently stuck at the age they were when they drank from the spring. The Tuck family, a husband, wife and two sons ages 17 and 22, are simple, salt-of-the-earth folk. The toad, in its own small way, will be significant later on. I still see a ten year old girl telling her troubles to a toad. I first read Tuck about 10 or 15 years ago and, even though it's a middle grade book, it has stuck with me all these years. (Thinking about this now, I kind of feel guilty about it, like I need to go give her some better books.) So I hung onto these few keepers and found a neighbor with a young daughter who was interested in taking the rest of the books off my hands. I was so disappointed.īut there were a handful of more interesting books scattered among the rest, and one of those was Tuck Everlasting. I have NO idea where my MIL got them from, or why. dozens of Sweet Valley High and Babysitters Club books. When I got home and opened the boxes, I found. With visions of a literary treasure trove in my head, I quickly offered to take them off her hands so I could keep what I liked and dispose of the rest. She mentioned, as we were leaving, that she had two boxes of books that she was going to get rid of. One day I was visiting my mother-in-law, a former high school English teacher.
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