When I was 12-years-old, this was my favorite book. I read it again and again. I once stayed up till three in the morning devouring it. The idea of immortality really appealed to me at that age; while going through so much emotional change, the possibility of stopping time, even for a minute so you can catch up, is enticing. A re-read is seriously overdue. I'm sure I'd get something completely different out of it now.

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No matter how many times I’ve read this children's classic, I never tire of it. The story has always been striking enough on its own, but it’s Babbitt’s prose that makes it special to me; even at a young age, I recognized the beauty in her style. She wasn’t dumbing anything down. She creates a full, living other-world of Treegap during the deathly hot August dog days, a seemingly time-out-of-regular-life period of the year in which Winnie Foster stumbles upon a spring of eternal life and the immortal Tucks. I find myself consuming it straight through each time, barely stopping; I don’t want to leave Winnie’s adventure.

Plus I always want to eat “flapjacks” afterward.

Upon this most recent reading, I pictured the Man in the Yellow Suit to look like an aged version of the Man with the Yellow Hat. You know, from Curious George. Which is ridiculous, of course…Man in the Yellow Suit has a black hat.

It might be made up of “a kidnapping, a murder, a jailbreak,” but at its core, Tuck Everlasting is a story about the virtues of mortality, not immortality; about living and dying, not standing still. From the Tucks, Winnie learns that there’s more to experience from life than just what her straight-laced existence has exposed her to already. One thing I didn’t like about the movie was how they made it a teenage love story between Winnie and Jesse, when it’s Tuck, sr. who Winnie feels closest to. At ten-years-old, a girl might blush like Winnie at the attentions of an older boy, though it’s still her father’s affection that she ultimately seeks.

Anyway, it’s a wonderful book, and this time through was great, as usual. It’s one I need to read every once and a while, just to, as Jesses says, “Remember!”