Reviews for Tuck Everlasting

The average rating for Tuck Everlasting based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-03-24 00:00:00 Rene Maradiaga I loved the story but I hated the ending. This was the first book I was ever mad at. To this day, I still scowl at people that say that immortality is a curse. Perhaps it is, if you're stupid and lacking in any aspirations. If I were the family in this book, I could agree. But no, I'm not... I wish they would just go to college and get some dreams and stop feeling sorry for themselves. If you have the rest of eternity to kick around, do something useful like trying to save the world. If you're going to live forever anyway, you're never really going to have to say you failed, right?

Review # 2 was written on 2014-02-07 00:00:00 Desmond Smith One day I was visiting my mother-in-law, a former high school English teacher. She mentioned, as we were leaving, that she had two boxes of books that she was going to get rid of. 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. When I got home and opened the boxes, I found . . . dozens of Sweet Valley High and Babysitters Club books. I have NO idea where my MIL got them from, or why. I was so disappointed. But there were a handful of more interesting books scattered among the rest, and one of those was Tuck Everlasting. 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. (Thinking about this now, I kind of feel guilty about it, like I need to go give her some better books.) 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. I still see a ten year old girl telling her troubles to a toad. The toad, in its own small way, will be significant later on. The Tuck family, a husband, wife and two sons ages 17 and 22, are simple, salt-of-the-earth folk. 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. Many years later, a young girl named Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret. 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. 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 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. 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. Tuck tells Winnie:"But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing. But it's passing us by, us Tucks. Living's heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it's useless, too. . . You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. 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? 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. I wonder if that's part of the curse of the magical fountain, that they are somehow stuck in stasis mentally as well as physically. I still would be tempted to take a chance on the fountain, but knowing I could never die or change, no matter what, would give me pause for thought. I'd be worried that eventually I'd feel like I was permanently in Sweet Valley High, unable to escape. It's an interesting little book and a quick read. I recommend it.