TUCK EVERLASTING

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.