I thought I would talk about Natalie Barrett's children's book, Tuck Everlasting. It is a story, written in the late nineteen-seventies. It starts in early 19th century America. A pioneering family, the Tucks, stumble upon a spring with water that gives them immortality when drunk. Although it take them another some years to realize it, they find they have to go undercover to go on living their lives. Because each time their secret is discovered, they are denounced as demons, devils, or witches. Eighty years later, towards the end of the 19th century, a young girl named Winnie stumbles on their secret, which leads to complications for all of them. She is offered the chance to join them by drinking the spring water--which will keep her always the same age. Forever. The end of the novel takes place in the brash, ramped-up 1950s, where the Tucks are still trying to lie low.

I read the short novel when it first came out and was struck by something. There was a downside to drinking the water. You didn't age, but you also didn't mature. The youngest son in the Tuck family was seventeen when he drank the water. Eighty years later, when he meets and falls in love with Winnie, his personality hasn't changed during those eighty years of living. He's still a brash, risk-taking seventeen-year-old with a seventeen-year-old's rosy-colored view of the future.

That idea is an adult concept that, I think, was slyly slipped into this book for ten to fourteen year old children.

Babbitt asks some profound questions about the meaning of life and death, and what risks eternal life here on Earth might really entail.

A real Classic in children's literature, Tuck Everlasting received awards including the Janusz Korczak Medal and the 1976 Christopher Award as best book for young people. It was named an ALA Notable Book and included on the Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List. In 2005 it was covered by Anita Silvey in The 100 Best Books for Children.

charlie.