![]() ![]() It’s about death, sure, but also about change and time and survival and memory. Ray Bradbury’s energetic writing does a great job capturing the feeling of Halloween and distilling its essence. ![]() To save Pipkin, Tom and friends will need to journey through time and space to find the origins of their costumes: skeleton, mummy, witch, gargoyle, ape-man, and the grim reaper himself. ![]() Where Scrooge is guided by Christmas spirits, the boys are led by the skeletal Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, a supernatural man who perfectly embodies the trick-or-treat spirit. The stakes are high: For Scrooge, his immortal soul is on the line For Tom Skelton and seven other boys in small-town Illinois, it’s the life of their sick friend Joe Pipkin. The book is basically A Christmas Carol for Halloween: A horror-adjacent fantasy story where the protagonists need to learn the true meaning of the holiday before time runs out. It’s a quick read at less than 150 pages, so I revisit it every couple years as the leaves start to fall. I eventually bought a paperback copy with incredible cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon, and dark, expressive illustrations by Joseph Mugnaini throughout. It was the sort of book I didn’t mind being assigned: fun and spooky, and seemingly not very educational (although now I think it is). ![]() I first read The Halloween Tree in middle school, when a teacher who must have really loved this story photocopied the whole book for the twenty or so students in his Reading class. ![]()
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