Every year Kimberly reads The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, in remembrance. Did you put away your childhood loves? What do you remember? What have you been collecting since you were a child? 

Purchase the Ray Bradbury short novel The Halloween Tree here: https://amzn.to/35P9WUO

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TRANSCRIPT

Welcome, Everybody! To Socratica Reads. 

I’m Kimberly Hatch Harrison, the co-founder of Socratica. 

We spend our time at Socratica making beautiful educational materials like something out of the future and also something out of the past. We’re leveraging the full power of new media, but at the same time, we’re careful to hold up the traditions of scholarship - stretching back to the age of Socrates. You can learn a lot very efficiently with computers, and videos, but at the same time, the heart of education is a dedicated teacher who can tell a story.

In this podcast, Socratica Reads, I’m sharing some of the primal influences that shaped who we are. I spent most of my formative years with my nose in a book. And so I feel very close to the authors who were there with me, helping me figure out the world. 

I lived at the library, and about once a week, my mum would take me to Vroman’s - the oldest and most extraordinary independent bookstore in Pasadena. Back in the day, you could buy three books for five dollars, so that five dollar bill with Lincoln on it still holds a special place in my heart. Even though money was scarce in our house, books were not. And almost all of my Ray Bradbury books have a picture of a pumpkin and a kind message from my favourite author.

Ray Bradbury looms large in my imagination and really - he helped shape how I see the world and the people in it. In this podcast I’m focusing on science fiction, because I believe that genre almost more than any other, has the power to develop your understanding of the world whilst simultaneously allowing you to run thought experiments about how the world might be different. 

Ray Bradbury IS a science fiction author, but he’s also a fantasy author, and a historian. All of these genres come together in his book The Hallowe’en Tree. 

I associate Ray Bradbury with Hallowe’en - and that’s not by accident. Every Hallowe’en, he would visit Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, and he would read to us from The Halloween Tree. He would be very formal - suit jacket and tie, sitting at a table, reading. Underneath the table, he was wearing shorts and white tennis shoes. I loved him so much, this grownup little boy. He was so jolly. It was like Santa was visiting, except on Hallowe’en. Hallowe’en Santa.

Every word that he spoke, every expression on his face - you could feel how much he loved the world. He had endless enthusiasm for rockets, outer space, mysterious creatures like dinosaurs and the Loch Ness Monster. Hundreds of people lined up for the chance to exchange a few words with him as he signed books. I never heard him utter an unkind syllable. 

I used to bring him a white pumpkin every year. I have no idea why I decided to do that, it just seemed right. I loved those weird white pumpkins, and I figured he would, too. He would draw a little pumpkin in my book, and ask me about how my studies were going. One time we talked about albinos and why their eyes were affected. He thought albinos always had blue eyes - maybe because of white cats and dogs. By this time I knew about white mice and how their eyes were pink. He knew just how to find what we were both interested in, within a few seconds! 

Ray Bradbury helped me feel comfortable being a collector of odd bits and pieces of information. Every magpie enthusiasm was worthy of paying attention. What made you happy, what made you frightened, it all meant something. You never knew when it could come in handy, whether I was watching Jeopardy or writing something for school. Nothing was off limits. I saw how Ray Bradbury had collected every shiny thing he loved and put them all into his books. He once told the story of how some jerks tried to make him feel bad for collecting Buck Rogers comic strips as a boy - can you imagine? But he had the presence of mind, at nine years old to stand up for what he loved. Spacemen and carnivals and magicians and World Fairs and he bottled them up and preserved it all for us in his books. 

This book, The Halloween Tree, is a supernatural story. There’s some time travel, and fantasy elements, and a historical unraveling of the myths we may not realize we are retelling with our Hallowe’en traditions. 

The Halloween Tree is set in an ordinary town, full of ordinary boys who run around in sneakers and drink soda pop and dare each other to have adventures. But on Hallowe’en, the best day of the year for these boys,  there is something terribly wrong with their friend Pipkin - the most adventurous of them all. The gang of boys stop by his house to pick him up for Trick or Treating, and he’s not dressed in a costume. He looks awful. Is he sick? Pip tells his friends he’ll meet them at a scary old house on the other side of the Ravine. And that’s where their adventure starts. I’ll read a little for you - this is when you’ll meet the owner of the house where the Hallowe’en Tree stands. 

Are you ready? Let’s begin. 

Let me introduce myself! Moundshroud is the name. Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud. Does that have a ring, boys? Does it sound for you?

It sounds, the boys thought, oh, oh, it sounds,...!

Moundshroud.

“A fine name,” said Mr. Moundshroud, giving it a full sepulchral night-church sound. “And a fine night. And all the deep dark wild long history of Hallowe’en waiting to swallow us whole!”

“Swallow us?”

“Yes!” cried Moundshroud. “Lads, look at yourselves. Why are you, boy, wearing that Skull face? And you, boy, carrying a scythe, and you, lad, made up like a Witch? And you, you, you!” He thrust his bony finger at each mask. “You don’t know, do you? You just put on those faces and old mothball clothes and jump out, but you don’t really know, do you?” 

“Well,” said Tom, a mouse behind his skull-white muslin. “Er- no.”

“Yeah,” said the Devil boy. “Come to think of it, Why am I wearing this?” He fingered his red cloak and sharp rubber horns and lovely pitchfork. 

“And me, this,” said the Ghost, trailing its long white graveyard sheets. 

And all the boys were given to wonder, and touched their own costumes and refit their own masks. 

“Then wouldn’t it be fun for you to find out?” asked Mr. Moundshroud. “I’ll tell you! No, I’ll show you! If only there was time-”

“It’s only six thirty. Hallowe’en hasn’t even begun!” said Tom-in-his-cold-bones.

“True!” said Mr. Moundshroud. “All right, lads - come along!”

He strode. They ran. 

At the edge of the deep dark night ravine he pointed over the rim of the hills and the earth, away from the light of the moon, under the dim light of strange stars. The wind fluttered his black cloak and the hood that half shadowed and now half revealed his almost fleshless face. 

“There, do you see it, lads?” 

“What?” 

“The Undiscovered Country. Out there. Look long, look deep, make a feast. The Past, boys, the Past. Oh, it’s dark, yes, and full of nightmare. Everything that Hallowe’en ever was lies buried there. Will you dig for bones, boys? Do you have the stuff?”

He burned his gaze at them. 

“What is Hallowe’en? How did it start? Where? Why? What for? Witches, cats, mummy dusts, haunts. It’s all there in that country from which no one returns. Will you dive into the dark ocean, boys? Will you fly in the dark sky?” 

The boys swallowed hard. 

Someone peeped: “We’d like to, but - Pipkin. We’ve got to wait for Pipkin.”

“Yeah, Pipkin sent us to your place. We couldn’t go without him.”

As if summoned in this instant they heard a cry from the far side of the ravine. 

I hope you will pick up a copy of The Halloween Tree. Visit your local library, visit your local bookstore. And revisit your memories and keep them alive the way Ray Bradbury did.