Title: The Halloween Tree
Author: Ray Bradbury
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 182
Rating: 4/5
This book is essentially a middle grade/young adult novella, except it dates back to a time before such things existed.
The idea here is that a group of kids are going trick or treating when they meet a mysterious man who offers to teach them about what Halloween is really about. That leads them onto a sort of metaphysical journey across time and space that takes them to Ancient Egypt, a Neolithic cave and England in the Dark Ages, amongst other places.
It’s a dark read, but it’s dark in the way that Tim Burton is dark, which is to say that it isn’t really that dark. Sure, it has a ton of stuff about death in it, but death is an inevitable part of life, and I’m all for books that help to get younger readers used to it. After all, they’re going to have to come to terms with death eventually.
And that’s what Halloween is all about.