THE HALLOWEEN TREE
published: 1972
It's Halloween in Green Town, Illinois, and eight boys, each dressed differently and led by Tom Skelton, are ready to embark on a night of trick-or-treating. But Pipkin- their best friend, and the "greatest boy who ever lived"- is missing: sick with pneumonia, and hanging precariously between life and death. Distraught, the holiday dampened, they set out on their rounds, first coming across the old haunted house across town. There, they find a truly wondrous sight: a tree bearing pumpkings from it's branches, a thousand jack-o-lanterns glowing in the from the treetop: a Halloween tree! It's cultivator? Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, a tall bone-thin man who seems to withhold a mysterious secret, because only he can help them save Pipkin's lost soul, trapped in one of his tree's Jack-O-Lantern's. Now the eight boys must travel across time and space, over ancient Halloweens of old in Egypt, Notre Dome, Celtic Samhain, and Mexico's Day of the Dead, and finally make a life-or-death decision to save Pipkin, while discovering the true twisted roots of All Hallow's Eve.
review:**** The Halloween Tree is bound to become as traditional a holiday classic as Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I mean, man, this story really has everything; it is Halloween, it's like Bradbury took October 31st, twisted it, wrung it out into a black puddle, and bronze casted the liquid into the words and phrases in the book. It's not any of this new phony commercial cutesy Halloween stuff. And the best part is, it has a real impending conflict. These eight kids' motive for traveling through time is truly believable, you really care for them and Pipkin. And it has that impending doom, that any moment their friend might slip thorugh their fingers; that BLACKNESS that shrouds everything, and makes the book real. Actually, it could have turned out to be just a fun romp thorugh Halloween history, that would've been decent enough and an OK read, but it wouldn't have made it more than an educational children's book or a guilty read for adults. The fact that there is this impending death of a child, a close friend, and the sacrifice that the eight boys must make transforms this book into a classic. Wonderful storytelling, read this come October, though you won't be able to resist reading it the other 11 months of the year.
NOTES: This book was made into a Hanna-Barbara animated movie in 1992, and Bradbury won an Emmy for his teleplay. Not as good as the book: it's a little more light-hearted, and Moundshroud's kind of cheesy. But it really looks like it could become a classic Halloween special, just like "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". And get this: it's narrated by Ray Bradbury! I'd like to buy the VHS once they put it in stores this Halloween, and I can put some pictures/sounds up then.