Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

• Title: Tuck Everlasting
• Author: Natalie Babbitt
• Publishing: Square Fish. September 10th, 2009.
• Synopsis: The book Tuck Everlasting is a story that revolves around the Tuck family who stumbles upon a magical spring in the a wood that has the power to give eternal life to whoever drinks from it. Unknowingly, the Tucks drink from the spring and don't realize until later on when they don't age and nothing can harm them that they are now immortal. Once realizing this, the family travels throughout the countryside, never staying in one place for too long for fear of being found out. The family continues this way until a ten year old girl in search of freedom named Winnie Foster comes along and discovers their secret. Soon Winnie falls in love with the family and will do anything to protect them from harm. This becomes important when a a man begins to try to find the spring to market the water for his own gain. 
• Natalie Babbitt uses tons of figurative language and a generally descriptive writing style that makes it unique from other books. She also tells the story using a narrator who is a completely objective outsider to the story which makes the story feel real even though it is clearly fantasy. 
• I remember reading this book in elementary school and then watching the movie and having my first experience of being disappointed by a movie because it didn't even hold a candle to the book. This book is so well written with great descriptive writing that makes you feel almost as if you are there with the characters in the story. I also love the message of sticking to your morals and the evil that is greed that play a constant theme in this book. 
• While reading this book I felt it would be a great idea to teach the concept of theme in books. The theme is so pronounced in this story that I feel having a lesson on theme using this story would be a great introduction. I would teach the concept of of theme and what the theme of a story is and then I would have my students brainstorm in groups as to what they think the major themes of Tuck Everlasting are. I would then write down their ideas on the board and then create a classroom poster listing all of the major themes of the book. I would also use this story to get the students to do some creative writing by prompting them by asking them what they would do if they came across a spring that was rumored to give them everlasting life. Would you drink from it or not? Why did you choose whichever one? This creative writing prompt would be great way to have the students think critically about a major part of the novel and put themselves into the authors shoes. 
• In going along with my theme lesson plan for Tuck Everlasting, I found a great teacher blog in which the blogger discusses strategy for teaching theme as well as a worksheet to help students reign in their ideas about the concept. The blog and the worksheet can be found here: http://teachingwithblondeambition.blogspot.com/2014/09/theme-and-main-idea.html
• I also found a book trailer for Tuck Everlasting that can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93MWCIGSl-E
• More information on the author can be found here: http://www.ipl.org/div/askauthor/babbitt.html