I love everything about Tuck Everlasting. I love the novel. I love the writing style of the novel. I love the magic that is captured in that novel, and beyond that, I love how Walt Disney transformed Babbit’s words into a movie version of that novel. For a few years, I lived in the Ozark Mountains, and I discovered that my house there was not far from one of the spots filmed for that movie–Hawksbill Crag.
When you look at the following movie trailer, you will see Winnie and Jesse Tuck standing on top of Hawksbill Crag, overlooking the glorious Ozark Mountains. Wait for it–It is one of the last scenes.
Hawk’s Bill Crag is in the Ozark Mountains, and it is 38 miles from where I formerly lived. While the Ozarks Mountain Region is not the Alps, the Ozarks is a hilly-to-mountainous area, and in places, the terrain is downright steep. The trek at Hawksbill Crag is treacherous in places, and the 38-mil3 journey there from my house requires more than an hour of driving time–each way. I took the following photo of a spot near my former home in the Ozarks.
The Ozarks is a natural wonderland, and it is filled with waterfalls, springs, creeks, lakes, rivers, rocks, and ridges. In places, the area seems to be almost primordial, and because of that, Hawksbill Crag was a great place for the opening of the movie Tuck Everlasting to have been filmed.
Because I believe that Tuck Everlasting is a perfect novel, I love knowing that I was able to live, for a short while, in an area that embodies the enchantment of Babbit’s writing. love to recall the opening lines of Babbit’s book Tuck Everlasting.
“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
As I said before, I love Babbitt’s writing in Tuck Everlasting, and when I taught writing, I used her book to teach several points about quality writing. For instance, I discussed Babbitt’s descriptive writing style, and how she used the circular quality of time in the plot for Tuck.
Jacki Kellum Looks at the Book Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
In addition, I looked at how Babbitt implements themes of nature in her writing:
I also discussed how Babbitt utilizes the theme of Homes in her writing:
I took the above photograph of a little stream near my former house in the Ozarks. As the season begins to shift again into autumn, I enjoy thinking about an area not too terribly far away from my current home in Mississippi–a place that wears autumn so very well.