Book Review of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

Goodreads Summary: Blessed with—or doomed to—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 of a blessing than it might seem. Complications arise when Winnie is followed by a stranger who wants to market the spring water for a fortune.
Goodreads Rating: 3.86 stars with over 186,000 ratings.
Genre Listing: Fantasy, Young Adult, Fiction, Classics, Children
Get the book: Amazon, Book Depository
Book Haul: June 2017 Book Haul
Reading Challenge: #38 a book that was turned into a movie

Housekeeping things

So, apparently, my reading challenge has been discussed in some reading circles, and that makes me excited. I'll be honest I bit off way more than I could chew with this one. 50 books is a lot, and when I created it, I was thinking of very specific books on my shelf. Kind of made it difficult. I've been asked to do one again for 2018, and I will be doing that. However, I am going to cut it down to 30ish books. I also desperately want to schedule when I'm going to read books. I'm also going to try and do a general reading update soon.  I'm still not currently accepting requests from authors, and I'm sorry for that. I just honestly do not have the time to promise that I'm going to read a book at a certain time. 

I'm going to be trying to make this blog a priority again so let me know what you want to see on here. Discussions, books you want me to read, updates. Either just let me know in the comments, on Goodreads, or the blog's facebook page. I hinted around on there that I *may* start writing short stories and posting them on here as well. That's still the plan, I just have to sit down and put the words to screen. I have something in my brain I think you all will really enjoy. 

Tuck Everlasting Review

I can not express how excited I was to find this book. I was in love with the movie when it came out (holy crap that was 15 years ago, I'm getting old). If you haven't seen the movie, it stars Alexis Bledel and Jonathon Jackson. I remember seeing it in theaters with a group of friends. I'm pretty sure they all thought it sucked, but I thought it was magical and whimsical. (Okay, probably not whimsical... I probably didn't use that word at 15.) 

This probably goes without saying, but there are some serious differences between the book and movie. The book is only about 150 pages or so. It's an effortless read, and I loved how everything was worded in it. It's descriptive, and I felt like it gave life to the scenery. I was really impressed with how well everything done in just a few pages. It starts off describing this awful hot and humid summer to the point where you can just feel how sticky it is. Have I told you all I'm a sucker for details? Only about a million times? Well, I'm still a sucker for details. 

This is where the movie and book start to differ. In the book, Winnie is ten going on eleven, and it's more about her and the Tuck family. In the movie, however, she's a teenager, and the movie is about a romance between her and Jesse if I remember correctly. This was a completely weird difference for me since I watched the movie long before I knew it was a book. I went into it thinking Winnie was going to be in teens falling in love with Jesse and she's ten. Awkward.

Because of how short the book is it moves very quickly, so there isn't a lot of time for the relationship between Winnie and the Tucks to develop. They kind of instantly just accept each other. Winnie, for the most part, accepts their secret as the truth (she does have some doubt, but she more or less goes along with it) and they accept that she's just not going to tell a soul. Just like that their friends. In a way, it kind of makes senses though. Starting out, Winnie is incredibly lonely she really only has her grandmother and her parents. I think that because the Tucks have had to isolate themselves for so long, they are also experiencing that same loneliness, and so when the Tucks meet Winnie, they cling to one another and form this bond. 

The books and movie end *slightly* different from one another as well. I believe in the movie Jesse was the one to go check on Winnie years later, but in the book, it's Mae and Tuck. I definitely liked the book version better. I think it just kind of fit better, and the movie ending was to make it more of a romance story. I really enjoyed the other notable friendship that Winnie made in the book. I thought the friendship with the toad was interesting and proved Tuck's point all along. 

I want more of this story. I want it to come full circle and know what all the characters did once they left each other's company. Where did they go? What did they see? Times like this are when I wonder if I should get into fan fiction. Anyways, if you have a couple hours to kill I recommend spending it with Winnie Foster and the Tuck family.