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Dec 25, 2020IndyPL_SteveB rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
*The Halloween Tree* is Bradbury’s only children’s novel, about several boys getting ready for trick-or-treating on Halloween afternoon. They discover that one of their friends is very sick. He says he will meet them later at the haunted house by the ravine. They all dash there and discover Mr. Moundshroud, who takes them on a tour of the history of Halloween, ostensibly looking to rescue their very ill friend Pip who has now disappeared. Along the way, the boys consider beliefs from cavemen, Ancient Egypt, ancient Greece and Rome, the British druids, the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, and the Day of the Dead in Mexico. Interestingly, except for Egypt, Bradbury visited all of these places in his travels, including spending a night in the famous Guanajuato crypts in Mexico. I loved the opening and the ending. In between, I thought Bradbury strained to turn history and human psychology into a fictional story of time travel and scary death events. Bradbury can sometimes write to excess and there is a lot of excess here that would have benefitted from some trimming.