Natalie Babbitt's Tuck everlasting The graphic novel

Gr 4 Up--Much like with her graphic novel adaptation of The Great Gatsby, Woodman-Maynard achieves the seemingly impossible task of enhancing a much beloved classic novel. Adapted from Babbitt's original text, with the encouragement and support of Babbitt's family, this graphic novel features the story of Winnie Foster, a 10-year-old girl trapped in a rigid life of societal and familial expectations. When Winnie tries to run away from her gilded cage, she stumbles across the Tuck family and discovers their unbelievable secret--immortality after drinking from a magical spring. Through lush, atmospheric watercolors, Babbitt's lyrical and descriptive language is brought to life, creating palpable visualizations of abstract concepts, like the imagery of a wheel to represent story structure, the cyclical nature of life, and the ticking of a clock. Also included in this edition is a conversation between the artist and Babbitt's daughter, Lucy; a "making of" vignette on the process of creating the graphic novel; and primary sources of Babbitt's handwritten drafts, paintings, and life. Winnie, her family, and the Tuck family are white. VERDICT Enhancing a classic and empowering readers to better understand complex imagery, this faithful and beautiful adaptation is a must purchase for all graphic novel collections.--Kasey Swords

This 50th-anniversary celebration of a literally timeless classic brings Babbitt's novel to life in a graphic novel format. Sticking closely to the storyline as she visually fleshes out its themes and characters, Woodman-Maynard serves up a sensitive reworking that invites readers to think about what they would do if they were given the choice between a normal, finite life and an endless one. It's a choice that lonely, 10-year-old Winnie Foster is left to make after she meets the Tucks (who stopped aging after drinking from a hidden spring near her house 87 years before) and hears their perspectives on what it's like to watch everyone and everything they know change and die. The woodsy, small-town setting and the white-presenting cast--from exuberant, ever-17-year-old Jesse Tuck and his resigned mother, Mae, to the distinctively angular villain known only as "the man in the yellow suit," and even a certain significant golden toad--are beautifully realized in the finely drawn watercolors. Along with incorporating atmospheric expository lines from the book into her scenes, the artist tucks in pinwheels and other circular imagery to evoke what melancholy father Angus Tuck describes as the ever-moving wheel of life and death: "You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got." The book closes with a conversation between Babbitt's daughter, Lucy, and the adapter, as well as illuminating photos and process notes. An homage navigated with confidence and care, as wise and wonderful as the original.(Graphic fantasy. 10-14) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.