Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Dandelion Wine
Book Review: One of My Favorite Books of All Time
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is about the joy of life, and a young boys discovery that he is alive. A beautiful, emotional ride. I have read this book over and over. A good book for children to read, but the themes are really for adults.Book Review: One of those that you have to reread periodically
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this way back in high school and it the boy "felt" so much like my little brother--the innocence, the outdoors all the time in summer attitude, the silent little realizations that life is real. It's a book about love really. And I find myself needing to read it every 5 years or so. Thank you Mr. Bradbury for enhancing my life.Book Review: Perfect Porch Book
Summary: 3 Stars
I know people who begin every summer with the ritual of reading this book. It has the relaxed, exciting, drowsy feel of a Midwest summer. It's the perfect book to sit with on your front porch, late in the evening, reading.Book Review: Realistically Delightful
Summary: 5 Stars
Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine can only be described in two words: Literary Triumph. Dandelion Wine tells the trials and tribulations of Green Town (known in the real world as Waukegan), a small town in Illinois. Set in the 1920's, the action primarily revolves around young Douglas Spaulding...a good friend, a loving brother, and a poet at heart.
Like most Bradbury works, Dandelion Wine is not exactly a complete novel. Rather, many short stories pop up within the action...from a suspected witch that lives down the street, a trip into the country, and the purchase of new sneakers, each is a story within itself. Each of these stories is recorded by Douglas Spaulding and his faithful little brother Tom. They long to hold onto these memories and make the most of them.
Dandelion Wine is more than guaranteed to excite the senses as well. Bradbury has such control over sensory imagery that the reader can easily smell the sweet scent of dandelions on every page, breathe the small town air with every word, and hear the faint jangling of a trolley in the distance. The book is also chock full of meaningful symbolism, witty metaphors, and unforgettable similes.
Although it is in Illinois, Green Town could be any lonely town, and Douglas Spaulding could be any young child who longs to hold onto his memories and treasure them forever in a bottle of Dandelion Wine.
Book Review: Summer Preserved in Glowing Bottles
Summary: 4 Stars
It's the dawn of the long, delicious summer of 1928 in Green Town and Douglas Spaulding intends to savor every precious moment. Thoughtful, literary and introspective the 12-year-old youth struggles to maintain his
satisfactory domestic status, despite the inevitable and intermittent sibling squabbles with ten-year-old Tom. Living near his grandparents provides a wider safety net for personal growth and emotional comfort--as well as the accumulation of special memories.
Like Grandfather's beloved summer chore of bottling liquid sunshine into golden cordial from 1000 dandelions. To savor on the chill days or long winter evenings. Like Grandma, with her exotic pantry and comfortably disorganized kitchen from which emanate the most delicious concoctions providing gastronomic joy.
There is so much to discover, experience and feel in the outdoor classroom of Life. Douglas decides to record everything he notices or realizes on a special note pad. However, he didn't originally count on the idiot-genius help of his little brother. It is a also a summer of
Machines: one man tries to invent a Happiness Machine; the maiden ladies dare buy and drive a green machine; a mechanical arcade game dsintegrates; an old man's memories prove a Time Machine for an eager, young audience.
But there is also the machine of human imagination and deep-seated fear. Do boys really want to be scared; do they crave being
terrified? For he recognizes the presence of a dark undercurrent which subtly pervades the town. First, there is the deep and dangerous junk pit of a Ravine which kids cross anxiously by day and adults tread cautiously at night. Then too there is the element of mystery and haunting threat of monthly murders--blamed on a nebulous monster called The Lonely One. Does this rural nemesis actually exist or is it a case of mass hysteria?
As the book begins--so it concludes in reverse order, tying up the loose or opening threads to wrap up events, thoughts and emotions into a neat literary package. Whether a composite of memories based on several summers, or a true compendium of one unforgettable season, this anthological novel depict s boyhood budding into young manhood. The author has preserved the place and people dear to him for all readers to treasure through future decades. But tell us, Doug, did you notice when your sneakers lost their desire to run with the wind? For at summer's end he is content to notice that "everything runs backwards." Which is precisely as it should be in Bradbury's universe.