Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Eyes of the Amaryllis
    The Eyes of the Amaryllis
    The Eyes of the Amaryllis
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    The Eyes of the Amaryllis

    By Natalie Babbitt

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Experience love and loss in this enchanting sea mystery from Natalie Babbitt, The Eyes of the Amaryllis, the basis for the 1982 movie adaption of the same name.

    When the brig Amaryllis was swallowed in a hurricane, the captain and all the crew were swallowed, too. For thirty years the captain's widow, Geneva Reade, has waited, certain that her husband will send her a message from the bottom of the sea. But someone else is waiting, too, and watching her, a man called Seward. Into this haunted situation comes Jenny, the widow's granddaughter. The three of them, Gran, Jenny, and Seward, are drawn into a kind of deadly game with one another and with the sea, a game that only the sea knows how to win.

    The Eyes of the Amaryllis is a 1977 New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateOct 12, 2010
    ISBN9781429955171
    Author

    Natalie Babbitt

    Artist and writer Natalie Babbitt (1932–2016) is the award-winning author of the modern classic Tuck Everlasting and many other brilliantly original books for young people. As the mother of three small children, she began her career in 1966 by illustrating The Forty-Ninth Magician, written by her husband, Samuel Babbitt. She soon tried her own hand at writing, publishing two picture books in verse. Her first novel, The Search for Delicious, was published in 1969 and established her reputation for creating magical tales with profound meaning. Kneeknock Rise earned Babbitt a Newbery Honor in 1971, and she went on to write—and often illustrate—many more picture books, story collections, and novels. She also illustrated the five volumes in the Small Poems series by Valerie Worth. In 2002, Tuck Everlasting was adapted into a major motion picture, and in 2016 a musical version premiered on Broadway. Born and raised in Ohio, Natalie Babbitt lived her adult life in the Northeast.

    Read more from Natalie Babbitt

    Related to The Eyes of the Amaryllis

    Related ebooks

    Children's Family For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      “Wicked Fox” Is An Engrossing – If Convoluted – YA Fantasy

      Aug 22, 2019

      Kat Cho’s debut novel “Wicked Fox” is a little complicated, but the poignantly rendered family relationships and fantasy drama are worth the ride.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Madeleine L’Engle’s Early Short Stories Presage ‘A Wrinkle In Time’

      Apr 17, 2020

      A reviewer reflects on reading “The Moment of Tenderness,” a collection of short stories, and then returning to the 1963 novel she loved growing up.

      2 min read

    • Article

      'Dread Nation' Is A Rollicking 'Gone With The Wind + Zombies' Adventure

      Apr 20, 2018

      But don't underestimate the latest YA novel by activist Justina Ireland – it's also a biting commentary on contemporary race relations in America.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Swedish Gaming Giant Buys Lord Of The Rings And Hobbit Rights

      Aug 18, 2022

      The company that owns the rights to JRR Tolkien’s works, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has been bought by the Swedish gaming firm Embracer Group, which has hinted it could make spin-off films based on popular characters such as Gand

      1 min read

    • Article

      Queen Of Salt

      Feb 6, 2020

      Queen Of Salt
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Island

      Jun 4, 2018

      The Island
      8 min read

    • Article

      Temptation

      Dec 28, 2021

      Temptation
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Wind Feels Loss

      Aug 8, 2019

      The Wind Feels Loss
      7 min read

    • Article

      The PEARL DIVERS of TOBA COVE

      Mar 1, 2023

      The PEARL DIVERS of TOBA COVE
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Silence of Witches

      Dec 10, 2019

      The Silence of Witches
      6 min read

    • Article

      A False Friend In The Blue Forest

      Jun 4, 2021

      I blink my eyes open and my gaze falls on dried palm fronds crisscrossing – not the white of my bedroom ceiling. For a minute, I am confused. Where am I? Then it comes back. I’m in my grandmother’s village in Bamboung, in the middle of nowhere. To ge

      7 min read

    • Article

      The First Coconut

      Aug 2, 2023

      The First Coconut
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      I met the Bishop on the roadand much said he—same old porridgeI heard as a child, my little bodya “foul sty.” “Love has pitched his mansion.” MaybeLove pitched her silken tent.Love has raised its dwelling inthe place of reproduction, which can be fit

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Beach Hut

      Mar 29, 2022

      The Beach Hut
      5 min read

    • Article

      Waving Not Drowning

      Aug 8, 2022

      Waving Not Drowning
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Sound Of Bongo

      Oct 2, 2019

      The Sound Of Bongo
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Denial Of Death

      Sep 15, 2018

      I had left my passport at an inn we stayed at for a night or so whose name I couldn’t remember. This is how it began. The next hotel would not receive me. A beautiful hotel, in an orange grove, with a view of the sea. How casually you accepted the ro

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Eyes of the Amaryllis

    4/5

    9 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I love this story so much, babbit's work is alway delightful
    • 4/5
      A bit mystical, but that's not surprising from the author of Tuck Everlasting. Not, however, a fairy tale like The Search for Delicious. Every fan of Babbitt would enjoy it, and so likely would fans of ghost stories, mysteries, and tales of the sea.
    • 4/5
      How would you react if you stood on the shore and watched helplessly while a ship carrying a loved one was dashed on the rocks within your sight, and you could do nothing to help? Would you feel closer to your lost loved one by staying in that spot? Or would the place fill you with fear and anger?Jenny goes to spend time with her widowed grandmother in a home by the sea, and is drawn into Gram's search for a "sign" of her long-lost sea captain husband. Jenny ponders, for the first time, the possibility of things that cannot be explained. This is a gentle tale is of mystery, imagination, and family love -- and I loved it. It's set in an era of sailing ships and horses and buggies, but the themes are timeless.
    • 5/5
      I must correct one other review. To be honest, it made me wonder if the reviewer had actually read the book. It is repeated over and over in the book that the ship broke up on rocks within sight of the location where the story takes place, not hundreds of miles away. It is also repeatedly mentioned that the grandmother and her son actually witnessed the sinking of the ship captained by her husband, which is why the son is so traumatized by the sea.Also, it was obvious to my 13yo daughter that the sign the grandmother was waiting for was from her husband, a sign that their love carried beyond the grave. The story is, at its heart, a romance. It is a book about love not dying just because people do. How anyone can read the ending of the book and not get that is boggling to me.Personally, I adored this book. It was a delight to find something on my daughter's school reading list that wasn't the typical "Death by Newbery Medal" book. The story was uplifting, and the protagonist had a coming of age that didn't involve being scarred for life. Happy endings in children's 'classics' are a rarity to be savored.
    • 3/5
      This abruptly written book struck me as abrupt and essentially, just not very believable. It is the fable-like tale of a girl named Jenny who goes to visit her odd grandmother over the summer. Years ago, Gran's husband drowned at sea when his ship, the Amaryllis, sunk with no survivors. Nevertheless, she walks the beach every day, hoping for a sign, or for something to wash ashore to truly convince her that he is gone. Jenny helps her grandmother on these nightly beach-combings, where they occasionally come across an eerie man named Seward. When they finally do find something, Gran is overjoyed, but it seems that Seward, and the sea, want it back.Before I launch into all of the bad, I must say that I did like the fairytale feel that this book has to it. Almost-ghosts and forgotten shipwrecks and treasure hunting a sea with a mind of its own? It sounds like perfect material to me. The children's perspective was also charming, though I think that the simple writing was also a major part of this books downfall.Things are written quite abruptly. Maybe Babbitt was trying to shorten her book, or keep things going quickly, but many events seemed to be brushed over in a cursory manner, giving me the impression that they weren't all that important. This especially shows in the conversations, which never last more than a few paragraphs, and always cut straight to the point. The biggest problem with this book was, in my opinion, the way that it simply doesn't seem very believable. Gran is waiting for something to wash up on her beach from the Amaryllis - anything at all, a button, or a piece of timber from the ship, perhaps. But this was not making very much sense to me. The Amaryllis didn't sink right offshore, it sunk hundreds of miles away. The possibility of anything from the wreck washing onto that particular little beach, out of ALL the beaches, is virtually an impossibility. Also, even if a button or a rope or scrap of wood DID wash ashore, how would anyone have any way of knowing what ship it came from? Gran does tell us that she doesn't think it will be an accident for something to wash ashore, but "a sign." She keeps calling it a sign, over and over. But what does she mean? A sign of what, from whom? Also, whenever Jenny finds something, she hears the wind off of the sea call to her "true to you." Cute, but when I thought about, that didn't make any sense either. The sea never wanted her to find the first artifact from the ship - it made that quite clear by raising up an enormous hurricane to come steal it back. So why would it say this? Or is the wind saying this, which is a separate thing from the sea?There were more aspects of the story I found unlikely, such as Nicholas Irving's tale of seeing the sunken Amaryllis, or the fact that the part of the ship that meant the most to Gran just happens to be the one that drifts ashore.Maybe I am being too factual and not allowing myself to see the fairytale elements of the story. Of course the things that happen to Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and those people aren't *likely,* but they make a good story.I personally do not think it is my fault, however, because the elements here did not make a good story, but a failed one.
    • 5/5
      Jenny Reade is sent to Cape Cod to care for her grandmother Geneva, who has broken an ankle. Jenny is completely out of her element. Years earlier her sailor grandfather was lost at sea. Because Jenny's father has never come to terms with losing his father he barely visits his mother, who has remained in their seaside house, and he has never brought Jenny to meet her grandmother. As a result Jenny has never seen the sea.The story takes on a mystical air when Jenny's true task comes to light. She is not there to care for Geneva while she is off her feet like her father thinks. She has been summoned to watch for her grandfather's ghost ship. Geneva strongly believes that her dead husband will send her a sign from the depths of the ocean, so every night Jenny walks the beaches in search of such a sign.
    • 4/5
      The book was fine, but I had expected better. When a sailor is lost at sea, his wife chooses to wait by the shore for a sign from him, while his son moves away and wants nothing to do with the ocean. His daughter visits her grandmother for the summer and things happen.
    • 4/5
      This is yet another Young Adult book that deals with a sensitive subject. After enjoying Tuck Everlasting, I wanted to read more by this author. She did not disappoint!I liked this breezy read. It was just what I needed, ie a well-written tale with sensitive characters and a plot that was not trite but told with depth of feeling.This is a story of a grandmother who lost a beloved husband to the sea and remains in her quaint sea shore house waiting for the ocean to give a sign from her long ago love.This is a story of a granddaughter who visits and is transformed by the events that shaped lives so long ago.This is a story of a son who, unlike his mother, cannot forgive the sea.The images are crisp and I could almost feel the roar of the waves, and the salty, stormy, tempest torn tumult.

    Book preview

    The Eyes of the Amaryllis - Natalie Babbitt

    Prologue

    Seward’s Warning

    Listen, all you people lying lazy on the beach, is this what you imagine is the meaning of the sea? Oh, yes, it winks and sparkles as it sways beside you, spreading lacy foam along the sand, as dainty as a handkerchief. But can you really think that this is all it means? The foam, and these tender cowrie shells as pearly as a baby’s toes? This purple featherweed floating up fine as the plume of an ostrich? That child in yellow, her face so grave beneath the brim of her linen hat? She sits there filling her bright tin bucket with those tiny shovelsful of sand, as cautious as a pharmacist measuring a dose, and watching her, you murmur to each other, Sweet! How sweet!

    But listen. That is not the meaning of the sea. Less than a hundred and fifty years ago, on this very spot, out there where that row of rocky points thrusts up above the swells, a ship was lost. There, see? Where those herring gulls are wheeling down? It all looks much the same today: the rocks, and this beach that narrows to a pathway when the tide is in. But on that day at summer’s end, the sky went dark, like twilight, with a shrieking wind, and the sea rose up tall as trees. Out there, where the gulls sit sunning now, it flung a ship against the rocks and swallowed her. It swallowed her whole, and every member of her crew. Captain, cargo, every inch of sail and rigging, gone in a single gulp, while the captain’s wife stood helpless, watching. Up there, on that little bluff, that’s where she stood, shrieking back at the wind, her son gone dumb with horror at her side. And there was nothing to bury afterwards. Nothing. The sea had taken it all, and gave back not one plank or shred of canvas.

    That is part of the meaning. But there’s more. A little later, three months or four, a young man broke his heart over a foolish girl. Nothing to remark about in that, you think. But he was an artist, that young man. He had carved a figurehead for the Amaryllis, the ship that was swallowed, carved it in the likeness of the captain’s wife—proud and handsome, with long red hair. Then he up and broke his heart over a foolish girl, and one morning very early, while the mist was still thick, he climbed into a dinghy and rowed himself straight out, out there well past the place where that sailboat skims along. He rowed out early in the morning, and he vanished. Oh, they found the dinghy later, just here, washed up, its oars stowed neat and dry inside. But he was not washed up, though they searched the shore for days. He was swallowed, they said at last, swallowed like the Amaryllis.

    But he was not quite swallowed. Listen. That is the rest of the meaning of the sea. You lie here so unthinking—have you forgotten that the surface of the earth is three-fourths water? Those gulls out there, they know it better than you. The sea can swallow ships, and it can spit out whales upon the beach like watermelon seeds. It will take what it wants, and it will keep what it has taken, and you may not take away from it what it does not wish to give. Listen. No matter how old you grow or how important on the land, no matter how powerful or beautiful or rich, the sea does not care a straw for you. That frail grip you keep on the wisp of life that holds you upright—the sea can turn it loose in an instant. For life came first from the sea and can be taken back. Listen. Your bodies, they are three-fourths water, like the surface of the earth. Ashes to ashes, the Bible says, and maybe so—but the ashes float on the water of you, like that purple featherweed floating on the tide. Even your tears are salt.

    You do not listen. What if I told you that I was that carver of figureheads, the one they said was swallowed by the sea? The breeze in your ears, it carries my voice. But you only stretch on your fluffy towels and talk of present things, taking the sea for granted. So much the worse for you, then. My two Genevas listened, long ago, and understood.

    Well, Mother, said the big man uneasily, turning his hat round and round in his hands.

    Well, George, the old woman returned. Her voice was strong and brisk, but, for him, a little critical. She looked up at him from her wing chair by the sunny window and saw—her son, yes, but also a stranger, well into middle age, tall but stooped, with the pale skin and scratchy-looking clothes of an inland man of business. And she saw in him also what he had been: a happy, wild-haired boy running barefoot on the beach. The two were one and the same, no doubt, but she loved the man because she had loved the boy. For her, the boy had been much easier to love.

    So you’ve broken your ankle, the man said.

    So it seems, she answered. She looked down impatiently at her foot propped up on a hassock. It was thick with bandages and wooden splints, and beside it on the floor a crutch lay waiting. It’s a nuisance, but there you are. Where’s my granddaughter? Where’s my namesake?

    She’s out on the beach. She’s—well, she’s never seen the sea before, you know. I suppose she’s…interested in having a look.

    Interested! Yes, I should imagine so. The old woman smiled faintly.

    The man took a deep breath. Look here, Mother, you know we’ve always wanted you to come and live with us in Springfield. Now that you’re laid up and can’t take care of yourself, it’s a good time to leave this godforsaken place and come inland where we can look after you.

    The old woman shook her head. It’s good of you, George, of course. But when I wrote to you, that wasn’t what I had in mind at all. You’ve brought Geneva down to stay with me, haven’t you? That was the plan, wasn’t it? My ankle will mend, and when it does, I’ll go on the same as I always have.

    I just don’t understand it, her son exploded then. All by yourself here, year after year! The sea pounding, day and night, the dampness, this blasted sand everywhere. And the wind! It never stops! I can hardly bear it for five minutes, and you’ve been listening to it for thirty years!

    Fifty, George. You’ve forgotten. Your father and I, we came here fifty years ago.

    No, but I meant…

    I know what you meant, she said. You’re thinking it’s thirty years since the day your father was drowned.

    The man gripped his hat more firmly. "All right, Mother, never mind that. Be sensible for once and come back with me. There’s plenty of room for three in the buggy, and we can send a wagon later for your things. Surely you can’t be so all-fired stubborn about it now, when you can scarcely

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1