Imagine you were holidaying in a cottage (in a oh-so-beautiful-small-town) located at the opening of a wood. The cottage, you would expect to be a dainty little one, tucked away at the end of a pebbled road, with roses and magnolias growing abound. Sprinkle in a few vines too, why not. But the story I am going to tell you about starts off with a rather sinister looking house, if I may say so. Ah, and for all those August loving birds (let us temporarily forget that the spooky season of October is knocking at our doorstep), the autumnal, cozy feeling that this book brings in is one to cherish. Don’t you forget your pumpkin spice lattes and an auburn sweater.
Now, the story unfolds in autumn, whisking you away into the dreamy village of Treegap. It’s one of those times when all the hands of a grandfather clock start ticking in all the wrong directions for no apparent reason, and the finale is one you’d never expect to see.
It stars a young girl named Winnie, who one fine day decides to run away from home, venturing into the sinister woods of Treegap, only to stumble upon a boy that she immediately loses her heart upon. Oh, did I forget to mention the most important part of this occurrence, the boy, in vain, reveals a secret mystical spring that grants the drinker immortality. Suddenly, Winnie’s life turns upside down in a matter of a few hours. As she grapples with this knowledge, and the truth about the Tucks (the family of the boy), she truly starts to question whether she’d want to drink from the spring or not.
The story, albeit a children’s story, weaves a plethora of deeper themes throughout. Why does Winnie have an urge to run away from home? As a freshman in university, one loves the freedom of being able to eat, sleep, study, party when you like; the time away from home is a high point in university. In some way, we can relate to Winnie. Later as she discovers the spring, her first instinct, as anyone would, is to drink the water. Is living forever as magical and wishy-washy as it seems? The thought of living forever and escaping death is a lucrative option. It tells its audience a story that indeed creates a timeless, classic children’s book that will stand the test of time.
One of Babbitt’s strongest assets is how she narrates from the point of view of an outsider, one who doesn’t seem to live in treegap but can describe every little detail of these chronicles.
It isn’t often that you stumble upon a gem of a book. The attention to detail is elegant, the imagery impeccable.
“It wandered along in curves and easy angles, swayed off and up in a pleasant tangent to the top of a small hill, ambled down again between fringes of bee-hung clover, and then cut sideways across a meadow.”
And for the humor:
“It was one thing to talk about being by yourself, doing important things, but quite another when the opportunity arose. The characters in the stories she read always seemed to go off without a thought or care, but in real life —well the world was a dangerous place.”
Not to forget the the cliffhanger that Babbitt leaves at every chapter:
“And that would have been a disaster so immense that this weary old earth, owned or not to its fiery core, would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin.”
(Oh, don’t you worry about me spoiling the book for you, that was simply the end of the first chapter).
My introduction to this book was, when my mum happened to bring back a book that she had borrowed from her office library. “A curious little book,” I’d thought, “…it’s barely 100 pages long!” The reading experience was surreal, it was like a treat to my eyes.
Now the only downside to it is that I have to endure the pain of rereading it every year (yes it’s a yearly recurrence and I absolutely melt down into tears every time I read the epilogue — it has me bawling my eyes out).
And if you haven’t yet been convinced to read it yet, then also know that it has received not one, not two, but 5 awards and recognitions. If you’re still geeking out with me, it was adapted into a movie and a musical. It’s time for all Tuck Everlasting lovers to come together to do a movie night!