Tuck Everlasting book and movie night

I read Tuck Everlasting for the first time in 6th grade. It was a required reading book and I always associated it with Fall and a feeling of bitter-sweetness. The Fall probably has more to do with the book cover than the actual contents of the book. The book itself had me feeling bitter-sweet and melancholy at the end as I pondered the idea behind it. Eager to discuss the book with my kids I assigned them Tuck Everlasting as a book and a movie night, and we all had fun reading and discussing the book.

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Tuck Everlasting book

Tuck Everlasting* is the story of Winnie Foster accidentally stumbling onto the secret of the Tuck family. Winnie follows their life as she decides whether or not she will keep their secret, and can she join them or should she return to her family.

There are a lot of big questions asked in this book. This is the first time I really stopped to think about the consequences of living forever. People talk about stopping aging, but prior to reading this book at 10 years old I had never really thought about what it would be like to live forever.

 

Tuck Everlasting discussions

There’s two big things we discussed with Tuck Everlasting:

1. What it would be like to live forever, the side effects, the consequences, how you would hide it from the world.

2.  Would you choose to live forever?

Those are two very different questions, and one that once I realized what all living forever entailed, I’m not really sure I would want to do that. Part of what makes life enjoyable is knowing there is a finite time to enjoy it.

 

Tuck Everlasting Movie Night

The Tuck Everlasting movie* came out a few years ago, and by a few, I apparently mean 15 years.  It came out during that time I was old enough to not really care too much about “kid movies” but not old enough to have kids to take the movie to yet. I watched it for the first time with the kids, which was really kind of fun.

There’s not a lot of things that specifically lend themselves to special snacks, but the few things that were key had some fun snack ideas to do with it.

Going fishing was a big part of the story, and a couple key scenes happen while going fishing, and my kids love goldfish crackers, Swedish fish, and fish for dinner. So we had all of those snacks.

Then we made fly fishing poles using whip licorice and pretzel sticks, and some gummy worm bait to go with our fishing poles.

 

The other big important thing we keyed off of was the frog. You see it in the beginning of the book and at the end of the book. My kids are always looking for excuses to get chocolate frogs, so I got some chocolate frogs for them as a special treat. You could just get a frog cookie cutter or the chocolate frog mold (which I’ve been tempted to get).

 

The final big scene the kids picked out for snacks revolved around flapjacks, so we mixed up a big batch of pancakes and happily muched away through the movie.

 

For our special drinks we had lemonade (another food specifically mentioned) and sparkling water (sprite) for the spring water they drank to gain immortality.

 

Some more 5th grade book and a movie ideas

Some more fall inspired book ideas: Book and a Big Idea fall