The Halloween Tree (on DVD)

The Halloween Tree
[DVD j Halloween]

I’ve been a huge fan of Ray Bradbury’s novella, The Halloween Tree, for several years — its one of my favorite books from Bradbury’s lengthy writing career. In that tale, aimed at youth readers, Bradbury’s creepy main character Moundshroud takes a group of rambunctious youth a trip back in time, to explore the origins of many Halloween traditions — Mummies, Witches, Skeletons, Monsters, death and afterlife rituals — and their adventure becomes a fight for the life of one of their friends. This made-for-television short animated movie manages to capture a lot of the spirit and tone of Bradbury’s story. To a large degree, this can be attributed to the fact that Bradbury himself is the voiceover narrator of the story, and legendary Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy provides the voice of Moundshroud. The art is fairly simplistic — this came from the Hanna-Barbera studio that produced The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest and Scooby Doo. And the story is simplified from the novel. But, I still recommend this for viewing, particularly around the time of Halloween. But nothing can replace the original novel!

[Also available in traditional print format.] [ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you read this? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!