Our ancestors harnessing fire to keep predators at bay, giving them more time to spin stories and create culture. 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). It will help you remember the enchantment of Halloween, trick-or-treating, and friendship.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. This book can be read easily in just a few hours, and I highly recommend doing so on or around Halloween to heighten your Samhain senses. His metaphors are like honey on the tongue and you can feel the autumn wind on your cheeks as you embark on this adventure in your mind. I can't begin to explain how wonderful Ray Bradbury's work is. It becomes their night's goal to get Pipkin back and save him from his fate. Moundshroud uses sorcery and imagination to deliver the children into the past to learn about Halloween in ancient times and places, each time coming across their friend Pipkin in another form and always just out of their grasp. Moundshroud lets them in and asks if they want to understand what their costumes mean and what Halloween is really about. When they get there, an eerie man named Mr. Their leader, Pipkin, doesn't seem to be doing so well, but tells them to meet him at the coolest house in town, the only one worth trick-or-treating at. The story follows a group of young boys headed out to trick-or-treat on Halloween night. The Kindle edition has fantastic artwork by Gris Grimly that really takes the story up a notch, too. It will transport you to your most favourite Halloween memories and modify them into something unforgettably spectacular.

The halloween tree pipkin