His nostalgia for small town America oozes from every page, presented with a realism that’s quite striking at times. Unlike his more famous works, like Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, this story – more accurately described as a collection of loosely connected stories – has nothing to do with science fiction or fantasy, although Bradbury dances around the supernatural at times. All relatively wholesome and happy activities, but Bradbury weaves some very dark threads of mortality and fear into the story, told with all the youthful exuberance of a twelve-year-old. He records the first trip to the soda shop, the first round of kick the can, the day he gets his new tennis shoes, his wild strawberry and grape picking trips and the first batch of dandelion wine that he bottles with his grandfather. Douglas’ only technological aid is a sharpened pencil and a notebook, on which he lists all of his summer experiences lest he lose track of them.

This energetic and inquisitive schoolboy spends the summer of 1928 exploring the magic of this small fictional city, in a time before radio or television transformed the American experience.

The joys of summer jump from every page of Ray Bradbury’s classic, Dandelion Wine, first published in 1957.īradbury tells the story from the perspective of Douglas Spalding, a twelve-year-old in Green Town, Illinois. That special season may be the reason that the word nostalgia was created. Just the word evokes feelings of freedom and excitement when presented to the school aged child that still resides deep inside even the most jaded adult.

Dandelion wine ray