The Halloween Tree - Ray Bradbury

On Halloween night, eight costumed boys running to meet their friend Pipkin at the haunted house outside town encounter instead the huge and cadaverous Mr. Moundshroud. 

As Pipkin scrambles to join them, he is swept away by a dark Something, and Moundshroud leads the boys on the tail of a kite through time and space to search the past for their friend and the meaning of Halloween. 

After witnessing a funeral procession in ancient Egypt, cavemen discovering fire, Druid rites, the persecution of witches in the Dark Ages, and the gargoyles of Notre Dame, they catch up with the elusive Pipkin in the catacombs of Mexico...

Happy Halloween, everybody! Or rather, happy New Year!

Who remembers their old childhood excitement about Halloween? The tense need to pick out just the right costume, the rush of slipping into a new skin for just one night, the anxious watching of the clock as the minutes ticked down to five o'clock and you could finally go out trick-or-treating? I certainly do, and apparently Ray Bradbury does, too. Which is why I've read The Halloween Tree a bazillion times. I watched the old Cartoon Network film a ton when I was little, but there's no way it can compare to the book (though Ray Bradbury narrating doesn't hurt).

In The Halloween Tree, we meet two very important and opposite characters—Joseph Pipkin, the hero of every boy in the town where he lives, the king of trick-or-treating…and Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, the mysterious old man who can take you back to that faraway October Country of the far, far past, and into the very bones of what makes up Halloween.

And that's basically what this book is about—the origins of Halloween, Samhain, All Hallows' Eve; not just the solar holiday commonly celebrated by ancient Europeans (and modern pagans), but a good half-dozen other solar feast days celebrating the death of the sun, the returning of the dead, the coming of darkest winter, and the promise of spring once more. And this fact—that Halloween, or Samhain, the feast days of the dead, celebrated the coming of darkness and the promise of the return of spring—is why in ancient days, the end of October was considered the beginning of the new year, instead of in January in the middle of winter. Which is why I'm reviewing this amazing book right now!

When a group of eight young men, led by the clever and very lucky Tom Skelton (dressed up as a skeleton, of course, which is why he considers himself so lucky), gather together for tricks and treats on Halloween night, they discover their true leader, Pipkin, is missing in action. When they go to his house, he sends them on without him, but something isn't right. Is Pipkin ill? Is he hurt?

* In the movie it's revealed that he's got appendicitis, but in the book it's left until the end as to what's wrong with him. The book was written several decades ago, when appendicitis was incredibly serious even for people who could afford the operation to fix the problem. But that's neither here nor there.

Pipkin's insistence that the boys continue in the Halloween tradition without him (claiming he'll catch up to them later) and that they go to the haunted house beyond the ravine serves as a catalyst, sending the boys racing toward the incredible and obviously haunted house of Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, who's true identity remains a mystery to them.

Though Mr. Moundshroud seems to empathize with the boys about the brilliant beauty of Halloween, though he almost acts as if he's a young boy himself, he's frustrated by their lack of understanding regarding where Halloween comes from. And when Pipkin does manage to catch up to them, only to be captured by a horrible black monster that sweeps him away into the past, Moundshroud has his chance to educate the boys.

Ray Bradbury's children's book about the history of one of my favorite holidays sweeps the boys (as well as the reader) through some of the most influential and well-known ages of history. We start off with cavemen, with the birth of Man's darkest fears during the depths of cave-bound winters, and then we chase Pipkin and the thing holding him captive all the way through a dozen different lands and times—ancient Egypt just after the pyramids have been built; early Britain during the invasion of the Romans; medieval pagan Europe; France during the building of Notre Dame; all the way to modern Mexico—learning about how each views and celebrates death and rebirth and the changing of the seasons.

The Halloween Tree's plot is a fairly simple one—a group of children traveling through time with a mysterious sorcerer-type in order to save their friend on Halloween night—but its beautiful, poetic prose and exotic settings always thrill me to my toes, as does the loyalty and love of the eight boys who call themselves Pipkin's friends.

I was ecstatic when I found it at a used bookstore, buying it immediately. It sits on my shelf now, to be reread every October. This book receives 5 out of 5 stars. I only wish Mr. Bradbury were alive now, so I could tell him how much I love this book and how much it means to me.

Happy Halloween and happy New Year, everyone!

LA Knight

Some excerpts I adore that really illustrate Bradbury's wordsmithing:

"The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats. Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked."

---

"The town was full of trees. And dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here. And full of fences to walk on and sidewalks to skate on and a large ravine to tumble in and yell across. And the town was full of...

Boys.
And it was the afternoon of Halloween.
And all the houses shut against a cool wind.
And the town was full of cold sunlight.
But suddenly, the day was gone.
Night came out from under each tree and spread."

---

“...They stood at last by a crumbling wall, looking up and up and still farther up at the great tombyard top of the old house. For that's what it seemed. The high mountain peak of the mansion was littered with what looked like black bones or iron rods, and enough chimneys to choke out smoke signals from three dozen fires on sooty hearths hidden far below in dim bowels of this monster place. With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. Even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some few stars.”

---

"For there was the Tree. And it was such a tree as they had never seen in all their lives. It stood in the middle of a vast yard behind the terribly strange house. And this tree rose up some one hundred feet in the air, taller than the high roofs and full and round and well branched, and covered all over with rich assortments of red and brown and yellow autumn leaves.

…The tree was hanging with a variety of pumpkins of every shape and size and a number of tints and hues of smoky yellow or bright orange.

…The pumpkins on the Tree were not mere pumpkins. Each had a face sliced in it. Each face was different. Every eye was a stranger eye. Every nose was a weirder nose. Every mouth smiled hideously in some new way. There must have been a thousand pumpkins on this tree, hung high and on every branch. A thousand smiles. A thousand grimaces. And twice-times-a-thousand glares and winks and blinks and leerings of fresh-cut eyes. And as the boys watched, a new thing happened.

The pumpkins began to come alive."