Tuck Everlasting

A book reaction

In 7th grade I had a reading teacher who had an overstuffed couch and a giant library in her classroom. Instead of book reports we had to do book reactions. Of note, that same teacher also taught P.E., and occasionally she’d make us meditate after the 10 minute run. It was 1981. Hippie teachers were awesome. In honor of 12-year-old Janet, each week I will try to share a book reaction. Far out, man. Enjoy!

I’ve been having trouble reading fiction lately, and I remember feeling a similar way in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic. I was watching an incredible amount of news, and I could not concentrate on a work of fiction to save my life. My mind was all over the place, and it felt like staying up with the latest information was a life or death proposition. Watching the news and doom-scrolling replaced book reading.

Similar feelings have cropped up at the start of this year. The current news cycle is relentless and fatiguing, which makes learning new characters and following a complicated fictional plot a bit of a challenge for me. But one thing I did during the pandemic that helped me keep up my book reading habit was to read children’s fiction. I started following Kate DiCamillo on social media and I read her books The Tale of Despereaux and Because of Winn-Dixie, and they both were a soothing balm to a wrecked nervous system. So I figured I try it again, and I picked up Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. And it is a lovely short read. It’s the story of young Winnie Foster who learns of a hidden spring in a nearby wood where she meets the Tuck family, whose members reveal their astonishing discovery of the spring’s life-changing power. Winnie must decide what to do with her newfound knowledge about immortal life —and the Tucks must decide what to do with her. Tuck Everlasting was made into a movie in 2002 starring Alexis Bledel, Jonathan Jackson, Sissy Spacek, and William Hurt, and it’s a pretty decent adaptation.

So if you’re like me and you’re struggling to keep up your regular fiction reading habits (I can only read so many celebrity memoirs in a month), consider sampling some children’s literature. It might calm your jangled nerves. I give Tuck Everlasting 12 pages of descriptive writing about August heat.