Everlasting

Summertime doesn't mean a vacation from learning for our homeschooling family. I love being able to follow our interests and had never intended to stop lessons during the summer months. I hope it helps our children to feel that we don't really ever need to take a break from learning. We all learn a little every day!

Yesterday I started reading Tuck Everlasting to the kids. They are loving it. I'd planned on only getting through chapter 2 but I would end a chapter and hear "read more! read more!" So we finished up yesterday with chapter 8. Of course I couldn't help myself and I kept reading.

I came across a striking scene in chapter 12, where Angus Tuck is trying to explain to the almost 11 year old Winnie why keeping their secret is so imortant.

"Winnie blinked, and all at once her mind was drowned with understanding of what he was saying. For she - yes, even she - would go out of the world willy-nilly someday. Just go out, like the flame of a candle, and no use protesting. It was a certainty. She would try very hard not to think of it, but sometimes, as now, it would be forced upon her. She raged against it, helpless and insulted, and blurted at last. "I don't want to die.'"

My mouth dropped open when I read this paragraph. The entire 12th chapter is a beautiful work in itself... It says everything perfectly. I just felt a little strange, having plucked this book from the library shelf without even looking for it, knowing I'd been mulling similar thoughts over so recently. I hope you don't think I have some sort of morbid fascination with death, but I feel like it is a part of "the wheel" that we often close our eyes to because we feel so uncomfortable with thinking of an end to our participation in it.

If you haven't had the opportunity to read Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting I must highly recommend it. We are considering watching the movie version when we finish the book - which may be today if we continue on at the same pace. - Joyce Brandon
reading Tuck Everlasting life death dying homeschooling