Taking questions at a New York City school, 1981

“Once, on a school visit, I was asked what the message in Tuck Everlasting is. I said, as I always do, that I didn’t mean it to have any message at all. But a boy stood up and declared with some heat that he didn’t care what I said, Tuck had a message for him, and the message was that you have to pay a price for what you do. A stern message indeed! And a message it wouldn’t occur to me to write a book about. Still, that’s what Tuck meant to this fifth grader.”