Q&A: A Timeless Classic
Staff -- School Library Journal, 5/1/2000
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Tuck Everlasting (Farrar), Natalie Babbitt's tale of a family that happens to drink the water of everlasting life. The author-illustrator spoke to us from her home in Rhode Island. When you talk to school kids, what grabs them about the story? It depends a lot on their ages. I avoid talking to teenagers if I can get away with it. Fifth grade is my favorite. The curious thing is that at that age, we really have philosophers on our hands. What do the fifth graders wonder about? Whether it would be a good idea [to drink the magic water], and if you could do it, what age would be the right age? They want to know about the magic water and where that came from, and how the tree was destroyed--that's a very common question. They really seem to think about these things. What do older kids want to know? They want to know things like, if you had a terrible cancer and you drank the water, would you have a terrible cancer forever? Or, if somebody chopped off your head...(She laughs.) They have a whole other kind of grisly way of looking at it, which is curious and misses the whole point. What are you working on now? I'm trying to get a picture book finished. It's about an inept fairy godmother who more or less accidentally changes her little charge into eight of herself.
