Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt (Book Summary and Review) - Minute Book Report

This is a story about a girl named Winnie
who lives with her mother and grandmother in the town of Treegap. Her family is fairly
wealthy, owning the nearby woods. However, Winnie is unhappy at home and decides
to venture in the woods. She comes across a young man named Jesse Tuck, who claims to
be over one hundred years old, but Winnie does not believe him.

She asks to drink the
water from a nearby spring, but Jesse insists that she not. Suddenly, Mae and Miles appear, Jesse's mother
and brother. Mae, aware of Winnie's request to drink the water, decides to kidnap Winnie
and take her to their home. However, as they are heading back home, a man in a yellow suit
sees Winnie and follows them.

At the Tuck's home, Winnie is greeted by Angus,
Mae's husband. Collectively, the family tells Winnie that they are immortal because they
drank from a magic spring in the woods. At first, Winnie doesn't believe them, but because
they are so nice to her, she believes them. However, the man in the yellow suit hears
their story and returns back to Treegap.

The man with the yellow suit tells Winnie's
family that he'll help them get Winnie back safely if they sign away their ownership to
the woods. Winnie's family makes the deal and the man in the suit goes to retrieve Winnie. The man in the yellow suit confronts the Tuck's
and explains that he will soon own the woods and the magical water. After hearing about
the man's plan to sell the water, Mae hits the man with a gun.

She is arrested and the
man is rushed to a doctor. He eventually dies. Mae is held in the local jail and sentenced
to be hanged. The Tuck's decide to break her out and Winnie wants to help.

Jesse, who has grown to like Winnie, offers
her a small vile of the magical spring water and tells her to drink it when she's seventeen
so that they can live as young adults forever. The breakout is successful as Winnie pretends
to be Mae in the jail cell while the family escapes. In the end, Angus and Mae return
to Treetop many years later to find Winnie's tombstone, revealing that she never drank
the magical spring water. This story centers around the concept of immortality
and what it truly means to be immortal.

Traditionally, society is enamored by the idea of living
forever. There is an array of products that try to keep humans looking younger for longer.
However, these are merely attempts to look immortal and are not true immortality. Looking at immortality more closely, readers
can see that it is more of a curse than a gift. The Tuck's explain all of the downsides
of being immortal, such as the loss of family and friends, constant moving, and others suspecting
witchcraft.

But perhaps the biggest detriment of immortality
is the lack of a complete and circular life, as described in the many images of water throughout
the story. As Angus explains to Winnie, water is always moving in a cycle. And it's this
constant movement that gives it life. A life is made up of different phases and periods,
and without the completeness of the death phase, life becomes stagnant and incomplete..