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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #223551 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 145 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Somewhere inside Ray Bradbury's head is a place where it's always golden autumn, in 1920s midwest America, and every night is Halloween. He has a gift for evoking childhood thrills where joy and terror come heart-stoppingly close. Here eight kids dressed as horrors for Halloween go hunting darkness and find it:

... one hundred million tons of night all crammed in that huge dark pit, that dank cellar, that deliciously frightening ravine.

Awaiting them is the comic-sinister trickster Moundshroud, who whirls the boys on a tour through time that shows them the roots of Halloween--cavemen trembling from the dark, Egyptians whose lives revolved around death, Druids appeasing their terrible gods, and so on to the grim carnival of Mexico's Day of the Dead. It's full of poetic flashes, as when "all the old beasts, all the old tales, all the old nightmares, all the unused demons-put- by" are summoned from every corner of Europe to become gargoyles in the newly-built Notre Dame Cathedral.

Bradbury's theme of celebrating life by celebrating death is underlined by fleeting appearances of the gang's missing ninth boy, the one we soon realise is gravely ill and may not last the night. But Moundshroud, who is more than he seems, offers a deal ... The Halloween Tree is written as though for children, with lashings of exclamation marks--but, just as in a fairground, adults too can let their hair down and enjoy the wild roller- coaster ride. --David Langford

Synopsis
A group of children and a "spirit" go back through time to discover the beginnings of Halloween.

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Customer Reviews

Magical and scary fantasy
I remember getting this from the library about fifteen years ago, at the age of 10. And then reading it again and again and again, unwilling to leave the frightening yet safe world of childhood evoked by the author (the same world as described in "Something wicked this way comes"). As soon as I saw it had been republished I ordered the book - and as I did so all the images of the two boys and their vividly drawn experiences came flooding back. If you are a Bradbury fan, and haven't read this one yet, then buy it. If you aren't a Bradbury fan, and want a taster - then you can't go far wrong with this book.

Beautiful, Magical and Moving.
Ray Bradbury conjures dark delights from the depths of history in this classic book. Have you ever wondered about the truth behind Halloween? Then join eight friends lead by Tom Skelton, along with the mysterious Mr Moundshroud, on their quest to save young Joe Pipkin - the greatest boy who ever lived. This is another magical work from the master storyteller enhanced by the gorgeous, gothic renderings of Joseph Mugnaini. The book explores the origins of All Hallow's Eve, as well as the kind of friendship that only exists in childhood. There's a lot of heart in Bradbury's vision of the scariest night of the year, and the sacrifice that the boys make at the end is perhaps the most beautiful in literature. If you enjoy it, and you will, then check out the animated film adaptation for which Bradbury wrote the screenplay.

A book to read every year.
On October 31 of every year since I've been 8, I have picked up the Halloween Tree and read it cover to cover. I never tire of the language or the story, and it has the same magic now that it did when I was 8.