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. 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. Ray Bradbury’s moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding-remembered forever by the incomparable Ray Bradbury. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma’s belly-busting dinner. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. The summer of ’28 was a vintage season for a growing boy. In this book, we follow young Ray as he discovers writing in an effort to record so many of the innocent wonders of one fateful summer far away and long ago. ĭandelion Wine begins Ray Bradbury’s youthful adventures. I took a long look at the green apple trees and the old house I was born in and the house next door where lived my grandparents, and all the lawns of the summer I grew up in.

I am grateful that he recorded so many of his memories and imaginations from our favorite back-east town.

Original story illustration for “Summer in the Air” by Amos Sewell from THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, Feb, 18, 1956

Ray bradbury book dandelion wine