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Title: The Halloween Tree
Author: Ray Bradbury
Illustrator: Joseph Magnaini
Published:: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007 (1972)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 141,762
Text Number: 416
Read Because: personal enjoyment, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: On Halloween night, a group of boys find themselves missing their leader, the most remarkable young Pipkin—and so, at the bidding of the ghastly Moundshroud, undertake a journey to discover the true meaning of Halloween and to rescue their friend. The Halloween Tree overlaps Bradbury's nostalgic and speculative writing, finding a home next to From the Dust Returned and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Its atmosphere is equally dark and magical, but its style is repetitive and twee with a cloying atmosphere of Americana; the result is a frenetic, creative, stylistically wearying book which frequently butchers aspects of Halloween which it intends to explore—the heart is there, the multicultural aspects are not. The Halloween Tree is a mixed bag, as is all Bradbury in this style: as much as I want to love it, I have no appetite for the nostalgia for the youthful white boys of middle America which overshadows the atmosphere of Halloween that Bradbury conjures with mixed success. Not one I personally enjoyed nor recommend.
"So much was going on that Tom said: 'My gosh, so much is going on!'" (pg. 98).
Author: Ray Bradbury
Illustrator: Joseph Magnaini
Published:: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007 (1972)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 141,762
Text Number: 416
Read Because: personal enjoyment, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: On Halloween night, a group of boys find themselves missing their leader, the most remarkable young Pipkin—and so, at the bidding of the ghastly Moundshroud, undertake a journey to discover the true meaning of Halloween and to rescue their friend. The Halloween Tree overlaps Bradbury's nostalgic and speculative writing, finding a home next to From the Dust Returned and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Its atmosphere is equally dark and magical, but its style is repetitive and twee with a cloying atmosphere of Americana; the result is a frenetic, creative, stylistically wearying book which frequently butchers aspects of Halloween which it intends to explore—the heart is there, the multicultural aspects are not. The Halloween Tree is a mixed bag, as is all Bradbury in this style: as much as I want to love it, I have no appetite for the nostalgia for the youthful white boys of middle America which overshadows the atmosphere of Halloween that Bradbury conjures with mixed success. Not one I personally enjoyed nor recommend.
"So much was going on that Tom said: 'My gosh, so much is going on!'" (pg. 98).
