Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

From the Publisher

"A fast-moving, eerie...tale set 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, where each boy gives one year from the end of his life to save Pipkin's. Enhanced by appropriately haunting black-and-white drawings."--Booklist

© Pauline Morgan, - SFCrownest.com

In this world, there are many kinds of reader. There are those who pass on the book as soon as it has been read, some keep the volumes to re-read, some collect.

Collectors come in different varieties. There are those who cannot bear to part with any book that comes into their possession. Others are more specialised. Some collect first editions or signed copies. Then there are the completests. They want everything their chosen author has ever written, sometimes even different editions of the same book.

The Ray Bradbury completists will want this book. So will those who have a fascination with the evolution of a piece of work.

The book itself is an odd size, laid out in a landscape format. The cover is a painting by Bradbury himself of the Halloween Tree, tall and laden with pumpkins. The heap of autumn leaves on

the ground is man-shaped; the whole image created in oranges and browns. He did it to illustrate the original conception of the idea. The Halloween Tree was originally intended to be an animated film and, after the introduction outlining the evolution of the idea, we are presented with a facsimile of the 1967 revised screenplay.

For various reasons the film was never made so Bradbury turned it into children's novel. Thus, the next section of this book is a facsimile manuscript of the novelisation of the screenplay, complete with changes from 1971. Then we have the novel itself. The original publisher, Knopf, wanted a lot of changes but Bradbury's preferred text has been restored in this version. The beautiful black and white illustrations by Joseph Mugnaini are also reproduced here. This is followed by a table showing all the changes that were made between Bradbury's submitted typescript, the first edition, and the restored edition. There were a lot of them. The next section is the 1992 script for the animated teleplay. This film appears to have attained the same status in the United States as Raymond Briggs' The Snowman' has in Britain. It is now shown every Halloween.

The final section of the book contains black and white photographs of the covers of various editions from various countries, as well as a bibliographical checklist.

For those who have only read the book and seen the 1992 film, they may wonder if including a girl in the latter is a sop to equality. It is actually a reversion to the original as there always was a girl in the gang. Somehow, she got lost in the book version.

This is a fascinating book. It gives an insight into the way one of the great fantasy writers develops an idea. The final version is the best and most polished, as might be expected.

© Barbara Peterson - The Thunder Child

How does the creative mind work? How does a project go from the idea stage to the printed page...to the little black box of television? In this compilation of The Halloween Tree, readers will be able to follow the journey from its inception as a mote in Bradbury's eye to its final incarnation.

This book, at 494 oversized pages, is a fun and fascinating window into the creative mind of Ray Bradbury.

Compiler/designer Donn Albright has put together a complete package:

Introduction - which tells of Bradbury's disappointment with the Peanuts special and his work with animator Chuck Jones

1. First revised screenplay (1967) (facsimile with Bradbury's annotations)
2. Novel in progress (1971)
3. Final novel submission (1972)
4. The teleplay (1992)
5. Companion materials:

Bradbury interview 2004

Correspondence - between Bradbury and Knopf and Random House
Promotional material - Press releases
Photographs (Book covers - English and foreign languages
Ancillary - various illustrations
Bibliographical checklist

There's the novel The Halloween Tree, and then there's the teleplay. How do the two differ? Why do they differ? This compilation explains it all.

Isaac Asimov once described the two ways of writing: the mosaic and the plate glass. Ray Bradbury definitely writes in the mosaic style. It's not enough for him to tell a straightforward story - every word is chosen to paint a picture, to evoke a mood. For a story about Halloween, the style works well...indeed reading The Halloween Tree, around a campfire while roasting marshmallows would make an ideal family tradition...if families still have traditions these days...

Publishers Weekly

When young Pipkin becomes ill and is whisked away into the mysterious darkness of the Halloween tree, his friends must race through space and time to save him. With a peculiar old man named Moundshroud to guide them, the kids encounter the many earlier manifestations of the holiday known as Halloween. The voice talent for this production matches well with the predominant characters of young boys, and Jerry Robbins plays Moundshroud with a good eccentric and maniacal tone. While there are sound effects, they are mostly limited to ambient vocals in the background and wind, never utilizing the more calm-fracturing accoutrements like slamming doors or dishes breaking. A wealth of music complements the story and gives the listener a sense of plot progression, although some of the singing feels a bit overdone. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

First published by Knopf in 1972, Bradbury's classic Halloween story for readers "11 and up" is now available with substantial cuts to the text restored. This deluxe edition includes a splendid introductory essay by Bradbury scholar Jonathan R. Eller; facsimiles of the 1967 screenplay and the 1971 novel in progress with numerous hand corrections; the 1972 final novel submission with a table of galley changes and extensive notes; and the 1992 teleplay. A special delight are the charming drawings by the author in addition to all the original art by Joseph Mugnaini. This is a beautiful book, a must-have for every Bradbury aficionado. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Paula Guran
Paula Guran, Fantasy
Expensive volumes exploring the work of modern writers are, at worst, exercises in triviality published to milk money from devoted fans; at best, they reveal something of the creative process, bits of publishing business, and an occasional kernel of insight into the work itself. But Gauntlet's Halloween treat is something else altogether: an impressive archeological expedition by editor Jon Eller into several permutations of a near-classic creation by a writer who has become a legend during his own lifetime. Reproduction of Bradbury's own art is integral; drawings by Joe Mugnaini enhance. The evolution begins in 1959 with a few pages of a never-completed short story that is reborn when a negative reaction to television's "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" results in a 1967-68 screenplay intended for an MGM animation that never came to be, but led to a "juvenile fiction" for Knopf. The editor and publisher insisted on keeping the novella within the 1972 bounds of the juvenile genre and the author's version restores such dark deletions as a barn "canopied with lust, pasted over with animal murder poster on poster..." and a "most strange smile...with a leer of death and twist of dry-rot and a lurk of funeral-candle illumination shadowing its lips." The Halloween Tree became a radio play in 1980 and, coming full circle, an animated teleplay in 1993. Since the study is made possible due to typescripts, carbon copies, printed galleys, and hard copy correspondence, the appreciative reader cannot help but wonder if -- in this digital age of word processing, PDFs, and email -- such illuminating scrutiny is still possible.

William P. Simmons
William P. Simmons for Dark Discoveries
A writer equal parts springtime child and darkest winter's heart, Ray Bradbury's fevered imagination and lyrical word play has entertained and challenged readers through decades of deep ravine wanderings. A poet and philosopher, his stories sing of a cosmic experience distilled through the intimate emotions of individuals. From hotdog stands on the red dunes of Mars to archetypal small towns in Illinois where jugs of dandelion wine reflect the slinking figures of midnight stalkers, from happiness machines to the final loneliness of silk-lined coffins, Bradbury's imagination can't help but fire our own, daring us to visit undreamed of places, see outré wonders, and taste both the burnt-apple joys and long ago sorrows on the other side of midnight.

Although he's often referred to a science fiction writer, perhaps nowhere does the truth, the honest magic of his voice sing deepest than when the firefly spark of his mind turns to the darkest half of the year. For no one captures Autumn with more truth or poetry than the child hiding in Bradbury's adult skin, harvesting shadows from the dark corners of mind and soul in all its paradoxical flaming red leaf celebration and weeping gray melancholy. And no where is this gift more apparent, and the results more bewitching, than in The Halloween Tree, a novel that speaks to readers from one to ninety three.

A frenzied shout of the wild ecstasy of life in the midst of graveyard mortality, this novel has long been acknowledged as a trick and a treat - a candy corn catacomb confection that helped many of us grow and better understand the skull grinning at us from behind our own skins. The ever-present condition of death, and its unknown possibilities, is a major theme of this sometimes somber, ofttimes joyous catabasis through time, space, and cross-cultural meaning as a group of children rush into the yawning storm of a million Halloween pasts. These children -- convincing as both individual characters and symbolic types - are willing to be gobbled up and resurrected by dark gods and darker yearnings in their quest to save their best friend Pipkin, the archetypal image of boyhood excellence, whose bright, pumpkin-lit flame of life has flickered out. And who better to guide them than Death himself, or perhaps one of his messengers (we never know for sure), in the guise of a mischievous, rouge-like parody of skeletal reaper equal parts Ghost of Christmas Past and mythic Trickster.

Subjects of death, loss, and mourning are treated by Bradbury with admirable delicacy and forthrightness, respecting youth's powers of understanding enough to refrain from the padding and dilution of consequence that permeates much Young Adult Fiction. Yes, Bradbury whispers across Druid hill and Mexican catacomb, death is scary: it is sad and mystifying and terrible. Yet there is also life, wonderful and rich and to be grabbed up, chewed, and swallowed with no less rigor than when the children eat and share their own candy-sweet souls in a stirring scene of self-sacrifice and love in perhaps the most moving and symbolically true scene ever committed to page. Just as All Hallows itself is a melting pot of various cultural festivals, beliefs, and religious battles, with the history of the human perception towards death, the eternal, and the Self seen through the folk festivals' evolution, so too does Bradbury's dark quest illustrate the various strands of belief and political change that lead us up to modern day Halloween. As much a textbook crash course of the holiday as it is a fine entertainment, Bradbury's young heroes experience the tricks and treats of various historic and cultural periods. From the Feast of Ghosts of ancient Egypt and the Celtic fire/nature festival of Samhain to the ancient New Year of ancient Britain and the Mexican Day of the Dead ( the later of which features prominently in several of Bradbury's darker short fictions), the very essence of a dozen different Halloweens are captured and dissected as a balance is maintained between fun and fright, fantasy and reality.

"Was it a trick or a treat?" Moundshroud asks his young charges at night's end, after they've braved the feast of the ancient dead, swam through midnight skies like Autumnal leaves, and each tasted the bitter-sweet sting of love and self sacrifice beneath a mummy filled crypt. While you may each have your own opinion as to the answer, the version of the text made available by Gauntlet is nothing less than a treat! For the first time this embodiment of the nostalgia, the wild spirit of yearning, and the paradoxical melancholia and joy of Halloween is presented in a triple version, including the preferred text which in some cases feature entire paragraphs of deleted material. Edited by Bradbury historian Jon Eller, this edition includes the original manuscript, the screenplay Bradbury wrote before the novel, and the later Hanna-Barbera screenplay, allowing a comprehensive ravine-dark tour of the text's evolution. An informative introduction, interviews, correspondence, essays, and illustrations round out this definitive love letter to All Hallows.

J.L. Comeau
J.L. Comeau for the Creature Feature Tomb of Horror
I urge you to click on the cover graphic and preorder a copy of this signed/limited edition from the great Ray Bradbury immediately (I mean NOW), because it is going to be snapped up and will be gone forever if you wait. The magnificent Mr. Bradbury, author of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES and THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, has given Gauntlet Press the opportunity to publish--for the first time ever--his preferred text for the Halloween classic, THE HALLOWEEN TREE. This marvelous edition, beautifully edited by Jon Eller, contains the facsimile draft typescripts, the final typescript, the submitted teleplay, original illustrations and other art, and a host of companion materials including an interview, correspondence, promotional materials, photographs, and much, much more. The novel itself is a classic of autumnal horror first published in the exquisite DARK CARNIVAL, a collection of Mr. Bradbury's most horrifying fictional terrors. THE HALLOWEEN TREE is a supernatural story of eight young boys whose small-town Illinois lives are changed forever one Halloween night when they are whisked away into the marvelous and terrifying world of a strange, ominous old gent named Carapace Clavicle Moonshroud. We gaze with them into the swaying midnight branches of the Jack 'O Lantern festooned Halloween Tree where the borders of time, space, life and death intersect. Thus we enter a supernatural adventure that only Ray Bradbury could envision, an Undiscovered Country where the eight Illinois youths discover arcane customs, beliefs and folklore. Revel in the dark history of humankind as you are flown across a haunted nightscape of astonishment and delight. The eight young boys who encounter the mysterious Mr. Moonshroud emerge from their adventures profoundly changed as does the reader of this amazing chronicle of wonders. Click on the cover and preorder your copy immediately or you will forever lose your chance to own this transcendent piece of literary history. Buy it now!

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