Books in Bloom

Tuck Everlasting

By Natalie Babbitt

Published in 1975

"The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after."

The novel's opening lines


My arrangement is complete, I'll take it early this afternoon to the John Curtis Free Library to join the others. I managed what I envisioned during my nighttime wake ups, woodsy, but a bit elegant like the characters in the little book. Transporting it intact, by myself is the next issue. I think I have that under control, in my mother's old pie transport basket with the lid open.

It's one of my favorite books, designated for young adults, but a must read for adults as well, over and over. There are two movie versions and a Broadway show that never made it, but I prefer to cherish the lovely version in my head.

Tuck Everlasting
by Natalie Babbitt

Doomed to - or blessed with - eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, the Tuck family wanders about trying to live as inconspicuously and comfortably as they can. When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret, the Tucks take her home and explain why living forever at one age is less a blessing that it might seem. Complications arise when Winnie is followed by a stranger who wants to market the spring water for a fortune.
Good Reads review


For the Record,
This day came in too hot and humid to believe that it's the last day of May.

Another year's Books in Bloom

Hat's Off to Hanover GC project

Happy 3rd Birthday to our beloved little M in Sweden