It Begins in Fourth Grade

A book that I read aloud to my students every year is the gorgeously-told, cleverly-spun, deeply-thought-provoking Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. And then I show the movie and we have a compare & contrast discussion.

One big difference between the book and the movie is that, in the former, the main character Winnie Foster is eleven. She has a little bit of a crush on Jesse Tuck and there’s the possibility of a future romance.

For the movie, they punched up the romance angle, of course, and to do that, they had to make Winnie fifteen. Last week, when my students saw the hand-holding and ACK! the kiss, they all groaned and giggled and covered their eyes. In one scene, the young couple went swimming in a river. As Winnie unlaced her dress, I could feel the eyebrows in the room raise. She pulled it off to reveal a slip that might as well have been another dress—that’s how big and thick and fluffy it was.

And from somewhere amidst the group of boys on the carpet arose a disappointed, “Awww.”

I’m pretty sure it was Cody.

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