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Tuck Everlasting -- a review written by Carol Hurst.
Tuck Everlasting -- a review in Odyssey Book Talk.
The Internet Public Library provides a list of links to reviews and criticism of Babbitt's work.
Digital Library and Archives has links to critical articles and reviews.
Additional criticism and review of Natalie Babbitt's works can be found at your local public library.
The following reviews can be accessed online only by an individual who has a current library card through this address.
"Drawing on the Child Within: Writing Entertaining Children's Books with Honest Characters."
Critic: Natalie Babbitt.
The Horn Book Magazine, Vol. LXIX, No. 3, May-June, 1993, pp. 284-90. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review
"Over the years I have noticed that an awful lot of people don't seem to remember what it felt like to be a child. This is hard for me to understand. My childhood is very vivid to me, and I don't feel very different now from the way I felt then. It would appear I am the very same person, only with wrinkles. We keep getting told by psychologists that our characters are pretty much formed by the time we're four years old. I would place the time even earlier, myself, after observing my own children…."
The Search for Delicious.
Critic: Margaret Hobbs.
The Junior Bookshelf, Vol. 39, No. 3, June, 1975, pp. 191-92. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"This is a fairytale in modern style; the Prologue, however, belongs to ancient myth. There are many traditional features of the Quest, but the subject of the search is…"
The Search for Delicious.
Critic: Margery Fisher.
Growing Point, Vol. 14, No. 3, September, 1975, pp. 2686-87. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"The Search for Delicious is a neo-fairy-tale, with a touch of Thurber in the way wit and irony persuade one to take a fresh look at chivalry and magic. In a kingdom that has long forgotten its fairy origins, the King and Queen are at odds regarding…"
"A letter to Nancy Chambers on November 3, 1977." (A review of Tuck Everlasting.)
Critic: Lance Salway
Signal, Vol. 23, May, 1977, pp. 97-8. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"Yes, I was put off by the opening sentence of Natalie Babbitt's Everlasting Tuck -- sorry, Tuck Everlasting. I think you're probably too sensitive about the rampant faux naiveté in American children's books and I had hoped to prove…"
"The American Connection"
Critic: Betsy Hearne.
Signal, Vol. 33, September, 1980, pp. 151-59. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review. [A review of Tuck Everlasting.]
"Babbitt's style is skillful, original, and pared down to graphic details. She also keeps symbols on a concrete level rather than letting them become abstract. Tuck Everlasting is about the cycle of life and death, focused on…"
The Eyes of Amaryllis.
Critic: Mary M. Burns.
The Horn Book Magazine, Vol. LIV, No. 1, February, 1978, pp. 42-3. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"Set in a late nineteenth-century Atlantic coastal village, the story of the two Geneva Reades -- one a woman in her seventies, the other her eleven-year-old granddaughter -- has as its central theme the idea that…"
Herbert Rowbarge.
Critic: Hazel Rochman.
Source: School Library Journal, Vol. 29, No. 4, December, 1982, pp. 69-70. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"Separated soon after birth from his identical twin, Herbert Rowbarge has never felt whole. From his childhood in the orphanage to his success as a rich and powerful 'self-made' man, he has sensed…"
Herbert Rowbarge.
Critic: Zena Sutherland.
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Vol. 36, No. 5, January, 1983, p. 82. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"Separated in infancy from his twin, Herbert Rowbarge (named by staff at the orphanage where a woman had left the two boys deserted by their mother, a dance-hall girl) never knew he had a twin. All of his life, however, he had…"
The Devil's Other Storybook.
Critic: Betsy Hearne.
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Vol. 40, No. 11, July-August, 1987, pp. 202-03. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"Ten more stories about the disarming creature featured in The Devil's Storybook further characterize him as playing off the foibles of ridiculous human beings and sometimes demonstrating a few…"
The Devil's Other Storybook.
Critic: Ethel R. Twichell.
Source: The Horn Book Magazine, Vol. LXIII, No. 5, September-October, 1987, pp. 607-08. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"As in The Devil's Storybook, many of the ten stories find Old Scratch getting his well-deserved comeuppance. Depicted more as a scamp or scalawag, the Devil is a source of…"
Nellie: A Cat on Her Own.
Critic: Susan Perren.
Quill & Quire, Vol. 56, No. 1, January, 1990, p. 18. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"Nellie the cat is a marionette, constructed of wood, yarn, and broom straws by a clever old woman. Every afternoon Nellie is taken down from her peg to dance. The old woman pulls Nellie's strings so that she leaps and dips and spins 'just like a dancer on stage.' When the old woman dies…"
Nellie: A Cat on Her Own.
Critic: Kay E. Vandergrift.
School Library Journal, Vol. 36, No. 1, January, 1990, p. 74. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"Babbitt's illustrations are as carefully wrought and as flowing as her prose in this charmingly cozy story about friendship and independence. Two cats live in a cottage with an old woman: Nellie, the marionette cat, and Big Tom, the real cat…."
Bub, or the Very Best Thing.
Kirkus Reviews, Vol. LXII, No. 3, February, 1, 1994, p. 137. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"The King and Queen are at odds: he says 'too many toys' will make the Prince 'soft and silly'; she says the many lessons with the King will leave him 'dry and dusty.' Still, they agree on one…"
Ouch!
Source: Kirkus Reviews, Vol. LXVI, No. 21, November 1, 1998, p. 1596. Reprinted in Children's Literature Review.
"A fine, comfortable storyteller's voice meets up with sly and elegant illustrations in this tale from the Brothers Grimm. A baby boy who is 'nobody special' is born with a crown-shaped birthmark, so the local fortune-teller predicts…"
"Discovering Ourselves in Other Places, Other Times"
Critic: Patricia MacLachlan.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 17, 1989, p. 7. [A Review of Nellie: A Cat on Her Own]
"'Read a story,' my mother once told me, 'and find out who you are. Or write one,' she added, 'for the same reason.' What she was talking about was the strong connection that readers and writers have to story, the connection that compels you to read or write to find a piece of yourself there somewhere; an image or smell perhaps that takes you back to another place and another time…."
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