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Dandelion Wine |
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List Price: $15.95
Our Price: $11.65
Your Save: $ 4.30 ( 27% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: William Morrow
Average Customer Rating:  
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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780380977260
ISBN: 0380977265
Label: William Morrow
Manufacturer: William Morrow
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 1999-02-01
Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: 1999-02-01
Studio: William Morrow
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Editorial Reviews:
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An endearing classic of childhood fancies and memories of an idyllic Midwestern summer from America's most beloved storyteller. Dandelion Wine Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. DANDELION WINE stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small town summer in 1928. Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future. Come and savor Ray Bradbury's priceless distillation of all that is eternal about boyhood and summer. Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A toast to Summer 1928!
Comment: Dandelion Wine, like the summertime drink it's named after, captures the essence of Summer 1928 in Green Town, Illinois. Rifling through the pages, absorbing the words printed in ink, takes us back to that long childhood summer of Douglas and his younger brother, Tom Spaulding as if we were lapping the sweet intoxicating magical drink that captures time itself stamped and dated on each reused ketchup bottle.
Every section heading (for there are no chapters, only events to mark the passing of summer days) is marked with a dandelion--a flower to fill Grandpa Spaulding's glass jar wall with the memories of summer. The novel follows the adolescent Doug on his journey through another summer as ever more memorable than the last. But this summer has an extra special something to it. It is the summer Douglas Spaulding first felt alive.
Ray Bradbury takes us on another childhood adventure where the next leap could land you in the mysterious forgetful days of adulthood. His writing fills the reader with a sense of excitement and wonder as his atmosphere builds itself inside of you until you can no longer remember whose memories you experience and long for--your own, or those of an imagined boy eating lime ice cream on a hot July day or putting pennies in the machine for Madame Tarot's fortune telling during the dwindling days of August.
This was a wonderful novel of insightful discoveries with a exuberance and celebration of life found only in a Bradbury novel. I highly recommend you add this, Dandelion Wine to your shelves to admire and pull down on cold winter nights. Whether it's the weather that has you down or something deeper, something hidden within the self has wrapped icy fingertips around your heart, take down Dandelion Wine, open it up, and experience the wonderful and magical Summer of 1928.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A classic of American literature
Comment: Bradbury is mostly known as a fantasist who emerged in the golden era of science fiction. He largely explored the areas that would make Stephen King such a huge bestselling author (like supernatural horror in a small town).
'Dandelion Wine' is packaged as a novel about one summer in one boy's life, but it actually reads more like a collection of short stories. There is a diffuse array of characters and a lot of different episodes and incidents (true of many novels), sometimes with very little actually tying it all together as a unified novel.
Still, I think this work ranks up there with 'coming of age' novels like 'A Separate Peace' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. It is also interesting to compare how Bradbury handles his fictional small town with Harper Lee's in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. Sherwood Anderson's collection 'Winesburg, Ohio' also comes to mind.
Many reviewers describe Bradbury's work as 'magical', and one could invoke a term like 'magical realism' with some justification. Also, this work is often described as dealing with childhood, but for all that it is obsessed with the themes of aging and dying. And the older characters take up much of the dramatic space.
Reading this book for the fifth time in my life, one criticism comes to mind: sometimes I wish Bradbury would settle on that one perfect metaphor to describe something, but instead he gives us a list, which sometimes overwhelms the previous sensations.
Perhaps the shame of Bradbury's success is that, coming earlier, he didn't get the sort of fame and recognition that Stephen King did. On the other hand, being associated with science fiction, fantasy and horror genres means he isn't considered a serious writer. Still, I think this should join the ranks of 'American classic literature' of the 20th century.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Oh, to be a 12 year old boy!
Comment: I first read this around 30 years ago after gulping down a dozen or so of the Bradbury sci fi books. I was tiring of him and ready to move on when I discovered this little gem. What a treat; I was transformed into seeing the world thru the eyes of a 12 year old boy, where new tennis shoes can make you fly, and the Civil War veteran is a living time travel machine, and the fortune-telling machine gypsy needs to be rescued from the evil arcade owner.
I reread this recently in preparation to read the recently released "Forever Summer." The magic is just as strong this time around.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A nostalgic look at the summer of 1928
Comment: This book came highly recommended, and I was expecting to fall in love with it. And although the language and images are poetic and beautiful, there isn't any single real storyline here. The book is composed of a series of interrelated short stories which chronicle the experiences of a young boy growing up in a small Illinois town during the summer of 1928. From these stories there emerges a picture of summer, gliding magically by. Some of these mini stories are quite good. They range from the light and humorous (for example, the Green Machine, and the use of black magic to upset election results at the Honeysuckle Ladies' Lodge) to the dark (the Lonely One is on the prowl, and so far this summer he has strangled three women in a ravine). Overall, this book is beautifully written, but I am deducting one star because it lacks a compelling plot and a "what-happens-next?" factor, which unforuntately makes this book easy to put down.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dandelion Wine/Farewell Summer Audio Book Disaster/Triumph
Comment: My wife and I just had the joy of discovering Ray Bradbury's sequel to Dandelion Wine (1957), Farewell Summer (2006) in audio CD format.
Farewell Summer
It is a delightfully well read audio book. We looked forward to hearing a gracious reading of Dandelion Wine as well. Thankfully, we checked it out of the library. It is headed straight back to the shelves.
Dandelion Wine (2 CD Set)
As others have said, this 'dramatization' of Bradbury's earlier 'childhood memoir' is a disaster. The production values are non-existent; the readers cannot be heard and the hokey sound effects have you running for the volume knob to protect your hearing.
Dear Recorded Books, Dandelion Wine deserves a proper, unabridged reading. Please contact Ray Bradbury and make arrangements to accomplish this task. You know how to do it!
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