Tuck Everlasting By Natalie Babbitt | Book Review

Hey Everyone! I am Max and I will be conducting a book review for Tuck Everlasting By Natalie Babbitt today! Tuck Everlasting is classified as a classic of modern children’s literature. I would like to thank Pansing for sending a copy of this novel to me in exchange for a review!

So, without further ado, let us get into the book review section!

Synopsis:

Doomed to – or blessed with – eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, the Tuck family wanders about trying to live as inconspicuously and comfortably as they can. When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret, the Tucks take her home and explain why living forever at one age is less a blessing that it might seem. Complications arise when Winnie is followed by a stranger who wants to market the spring water for a fortune.

Review:

Since this is not an exceptionally long book (this edition of the novel that I owned has 215 pages and the font is pretty huge), this will not be a long review as well because I do not want to give anything away if you are attempting to read the novel. Therefore, we will start the review by elucidating on the writing style of the novel.

The writing style of this novel is pretty straightforward which is fine for a children novel but it does not have anything distinctive going for it. It is not saturated with purple prose nor is it written seamlessly. Some of the sentences did indeed fall short while a modicum of them extend beyond what is necessary. Besides, there is more telling instead of showing. For example, “The constable was fat, and he was sleepy. He wheezed when he spoke. And he spoke quite a bit as they started off, he and the man in yellow suit.” I did not fancy the way it is written, I thought it would be better if the author were to switch it up and describe the scenes instead of taking the easy way out. However, the word selections and the composition of the writing are easily digestible and it can be read comfortably by a child. 

Now, I would like to express my distaste for the so-called “romance” in this novel although, it did not head to that stage (thank goodness!). Winnie, the protagonist of this novel, is an innocent ten-year-old child who is out wandering in the woods one afternoon, comes across this pond that will proffer immortality if you drink its content. The Tuck Family is a family of immortals because they drank from the pond decades before decides to abduct Winnie and tries to reason with her on humanity and whatnot to obstruct her from drinking from the pond. Here is where the book promotes paedophilia. Jesse Tuck who is an immortalized seventeen-year-old likes Winnie and he gives her the water and tells her to drink it when she gets older so that they can be together forever. When I read this, I was absolutely disgusted and it boggled (and it still boggles) my mind as to how the author thinks this behaviour is acceptable and put it into a children book where it will probably go unnoticed. I cannot tell if this is done intentionally because later in the novel, Winnie grows up and dies without drinking the water from the pond, but it did not sit well with me.

Although I did capture the messages that the author is trying to convey through this novel, I feel like the messages are quite stale and they are also messages that are ratiocinated in the world. It did not bring anything new to the table and if it had indeed brought something innovative once upon a time, then I will safely say that this book is not evergreen in terms of the lessons that the author would like us to learn.

The pacing of this novel makes everything bearable for once. Since it is written like a piece of old tackle and it has more ‘tells than shows’, the pacing of this novel quickens with ease. I read this novel in 2 hours because there’s something happening in almost every scene and it held my attention until the very end of the book but unfortunately, it just isn’t a good book.

Thus, my final verdict for this novel is 15% (F). Normally I love reading children classics because they are such a delight to read to children or to read by yourself but this is just not it.

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This is the end of my review for Tuck Everlasting By Natalie Babbitt! I hope you all enjoyed it and follow me with your email/Wordpress account to get notifications when I post a new article! Bye!