The October Country.

“I’m not afraid of machines,” he told Writer’s Digest in 1976. “I don’t think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don’t take the toys out of their hands, we’re fools.”

RIP Ray Bradbury.  Here's a nice review, out on the web, of one of my favorite of his books.  We Midwesterners especially, I think, will miss him.

THE HALLOWEEN TREE by Ray Bradbury / Yearling – reprint (September 1999 edition, originally published in 1972) / 160 pp. / Hardcover or Paperback

Whenever I think of Halloween, I think of Ray Bradbury. Not only is he one our greatest writers but he has the natural ability to create a sense of innocence, a sense of wonder, and even more so, the ability to take us to a time when Halloween meant more to us than ever before. An era where boys wanted to be astronauts, cowboys, or firemen. And where young girls wore saddleback shoes and poodle skirts. Ray Bradbury could and still does teleport us to different times and places that we wish we lived.

The Halloween Tree is no exception. This novella or novelette is about friendship, love, and history. A tale that not only transports the reader but transports eight boys who journey through Halloween’s history to find their best friend, Pipkin

Pipkin is the boy of all boys. So much so that when he was born all the ‘soda pop bottles in the world fizzed over’. And when he goes missing Halloween isn’t and won’t be the same without him. So Mr. Moundshroud, the strange but elegant man, who lives in the creepy house upon the hill leads the boys into other worlds in search of Pipkin.

Mr. Moundshroud is a tall man whom the boys trust but trust is a loose term because the eerie man has his own agenda. What is his agenda and why? That’s for you to find out.
There are many symbols that Bradbury lays into this story. For instance, each boy in his trick or treating outfit is a symbol or a representation of a moment in Halloween history. The Halloween Tree with its thousands of hanging, lighted pumpkins are a symbol as well. And when each boy returns home and the last of the doors slam shut to end another night of Halloween, the pumpkins snuff out one by one.

If you have never read The Halloween Tree, you should. Not just because it’s a Bradbury story but because the story is layered, and in the end comes down to giving oneself in order to save another.

What would you give to save your best friend? Where would you go – and go through – to find him or her?

What does Halloween mean to you?

…because it is much, much more than candy.

- Sheldon Higdon