Dandelion Wine (1957) by Ray Bradbury

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Every time summer approaches I feel my hands reach out for this book.  With this book Ray Bradbury has plucked up summer memories and stories, has bottled them and left them to ferment all these years for the readers of today to drink up its golden splendor.  Really though, every sentence of this book is like taking a sip of golden honey summer.  Although it is one work of fiction you can really read this book as a collection of stories which is also what is so delicious about it.  On a lazy summer day I find myself flopping on the couch, listening to the cicadas, and reading slowly a tiny section of this book.  It's not to be rushed!!!  It's to be enjoyed long and slow and lazily like the best summer day.

The stories take place in the summer of 1928 lending it to be a very nostalgic book.  It leaves you yearning to try out what simpler times were like.  It leaves you wanting to make your own pie from scratch, wanting to just sit out on your porch at night and wave to your other neighbors on their porches.  The story focuses on Douglas, a twelve year old, and his little brother Tom, a ten year old.  Throughout all that happens this summer both Douglas and Tom learn many life lessons and of course so does the reader.  This book is ultimately about family and neighbors and people and the funny things people do and just when you think this book is tame it jumps out and surprises you and reminds you that its genre is Science Fiction after all!

I first read Dandelion Wine when I was seventeen.  It was assigned to me as summer reading by a wonderful teacher, named Mr. Keck, before entering my senior year AP Literature class.  Although I didn't appreciate the text then as much as I do now I still believe this is an excellent book for young people to read.  I would even read this to my own children as young as twelve.  I also believe this to be a book that can truly be appreciated at any age and I am confident that in my eighty's and ninety's I will still look forward to the beginnings of summers when my hands will again find this book to reread it and take yet another sip of its golden honey prose.

Happy Reading!