The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

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. 

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