Tuck Everlasting

Tuck Everlasting is an American children's novel about immortality by Natalie Babbitt, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1975. It is set in a village at the edge of a wood, and its story begins when a young girl leaves her own garden for the first time.

Winnie Foster is ten years old and tired of being watched, so she walks into the wood that belongs to her family and finds a spring, a boy and then the rest of his family. The Tucks drank from the spring years earlier and have not aged since, and their problem is that they cannot die; they take Winnie home so that she will understand why the water has to be kept secret from everyone.

Babbitt writes a short, quiet novel that asks a question children can hold: whether living forever would be a gift or the loss of everything that gives a life its shape. It has sold millions of copies and is usually described as a modern children's classic, and its resolution turns on what a ten-year-old decides about the spring.