Tuck Everlasting - Natalie Babbitt - ★.½
AUTHOR: Natalie Babbitt GENRE: Middle-grade Fiction, Classic PUBLICATION DATE: 1975 RATING: 1.5 stars. In a Nutshell: How in the world is this a children’s classic and recommended reading in schools? 🤔 I finally got the chance to read this popular classic. While a part of me sees the appeal of the concept – a family that lives forever, I couldn’t find myself impressed with the storytelling or the characters. The plot is too focussed on specifying the whats without any of the whys. This leads to a telling-dominated narrative which irks after a while. The characters also appear flat because of this. There are a few plot holes as well, the biggest one connected to how our narrator ends up with the Tucks. Further, this book has a child kidnapping (leading to Stockholm Syndrome), a stalker, a murder occurring on page, imprisonment, and abetment of a prisoner’s escape – not exactly what I expected in a MG/YA book. Worst of all: I didn’t expect our ten-year-old lead character to express inst...