Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury's tale of Summer 1928 in small Green Town, Illinois, is a wonder. The words fly about the pages as sparkly as the fireflies that light up the summer nights.
The story is full of an astonishing collection of characters. Some we meet only once; some come off their front porch swings to visit again and again.
The main character, twelve-year-old Doug Spaulding, discovers this summer that he is alive. He also discovers that nothing lasts forever - not friendship, nor machines, nor loved ones, and especially not summer.
Doug attempts to capture the events and lessons of the summer on paper, writing on his nickel tablet with a yellow Ticonderoga pencil. One section is titled Rites and Ceremonies, a record of all the things that happen over and over again. The other section is titled Discoveries and Revelations, a record of ideas that occur to him in response to that summer's happenings.
The bottles of this year's crop of dandelion wine in his grandfather's cellar store in liquid form the good things of summer: the great day Doug got his new sneakers, the day he and his younger brother Tom (who is quite the philosopher) rescued the Tarot Witch, times spent with Colonel Freeleigh listening to his memorable stories.
But the bottles also contain the sorrowful day his best friend moved away and the day the sisters Miss Fern and Miss Roberts put away the Green Machine in the garage forever. And the day the town's trolley stopped running on its silver tracks. And the night the Lonely One killed yet another young woman.
I could go on pulling out scenes and characters and events, but you really need to experience the book for yourself. And it is an experience. It is quite a dazzling tale told with affection and humor and heartbreak...and a perfect summer read.
I finally got my hands on a copy of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine as a good book to savor this summer. What a treat. I am only half-way through, but I can tell you that it makes me want to be a 12-year-old boy living in a small town in the summer of 1928.
And what a change that would be!
The tale is really a series of short stories (or so it seems) and they are so beautifully and dreamily evocative of summer's fireflies and white clouds, grasshoppers and games on the lawn, wild blackberries and the sound of slamming screen doors.
Here is, to me, a breathtaking introduction to John Huff, the best friend of the main character Douglas Spaulding:
The facts about John Huff, aged twelve, are simple and soon stated. He could pathfind more trails than any Choctaw or Cherokee since time began, could leap from the sky like a chimpanzee from a vine, could live underwater two minutes and slide fifty yards downstream from where you last saw him. The baseballs you pitched him he hit in the apple trees, knocking down harvests. He could jump six-foot orchard walls, swing up branches faster and come down, fat with peaches, quicker than anyone else in the gang. He ran laughing. He sat easy. He was not a bully. He was kind. His hair was dark and curly and his teeth were white as cream. He remembered the words to all the cowboy songs and would teach you if you asked. He knew the names of all the wild flowers and when the moon would rise and set and when the tides came in or out. He was, in fact, the only god living in the whole of Green Town, Illinois, during the twentieth century that Douglas Spaulding knew of.
Speaking of June and summer, I am reminded of the novel Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. The stories featuring a 12-year-old boy and his family and friends take place during one summer in the 1920s in a small Illinois town. I read it so long ago I can only remember that the boy's grandmother made dandelion wine and that Mr. Bradbury evoked summer so very well I could almost see the fireflies glittering in the moist night air.
This is one of the novels I want to reread this summer. I am making a Summer Reading List for myself since I have no schoolmarms to make suggestions for me.
Summer is for children and I plan on experiencing the joy of the season through the eyes of a couple of the fictional characters I have forgotten about.
Dandelion Wine seems an excellent place to begin.
