The Fantastic, Wonderful Childhood of Ray Bradbury
How a lesser-known novel mirrors the author’s childhood…
Ray Bradbury. The name evokes a sense of wonder, an exploration into fantastic realms, the discovery of a place never seen by human sight. It is the name of a man who was, and perhaps still is, the greatest fantasy and horror writer of the twentieth century, a writer who established himself as the forerunner for what we now know as science fiction.
If you were to ask a reader to name a book written by Bradbury, you would be hard pressed to find an answer other than Fahrenheit 451. Since its publication in 1953, the dystopian novel has received praise for its creation of a censored world where books are burned. It is Bradbury’s most popular work, and arguably his best. But despite its success, the novel does very little to tell us about the author. It gives no glimpse into who Bradbury was; it merely tells us what he was capable of creating.
It was in Ray Bradbury’s 1957 Dandelion Wine that readers first saw the character of the creator. The short novel, which occurs in the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Hill, Illinois, mirrors Bradbury’s own childhood in the small town of Waukegan. It is through the main character, twelve year-old Douglas Spaulding, that Ray Bradbury reveals his past to his audience.
