Lori Keeton's Reviews > Dandelion Wine

edited 5-20-21 I finished reading this in February but I still haven't stopped thinking about this amazing book. There is something special about a book when I keep thinking about it and how it just makes me smile! So, I am upgrading my rating from 4 to 5 stars! It's definitely worth it!

What was so magical about the summer when you were 12? What were the rituals you couldn’t wait for to happen? For me, it’s not so easy to remember that far back (35+ years ago!) any more. But I’m certain that my childhood dreams and desires were not what they are now. Reminiscing can be sad in a way when you’ve had many years of life to look back over. But wouldn’t it be great to be 12 again without a care in the world?

Ray Bradbury has given us a magical story about the imagination of a young boy captivated by the marvel and wonder of the first day of summer. This is the summer when Douglas Spaulding realizes he is alive and all he wants to do this summer is to feel all there is to feel.

It is summer and a time for a 12 year old boy to be free and independent and test boundaries and find magic. Douglas pretends as most 12 year olds will do and through this imagination he is able to turn the ordinary, everyday things into magic! I love the opening chapter scene where Douglas is allowed to stay over in his grandparent’s third floor cupola room which to him is like a turret in a castle. When morning comes, Douglas manipulates the stars and the lights of all the houses to turn on with a swish of his hands. He is the magician in control of waking up the town and turning on the day.
Douglas, conducting an orchestra, pointed to the eastern sky.

The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.

Douglas wants nothing more than to experience life fully and freely and to make sure that he doesn’t miss out on the most important bits, the rites of summer. The first one, and the most important, is picking the dandelions and then making the wine with grandpa.

Dandelion Wine.
The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered.

And now that Douglas knew, he really knew he was alive, and moved turning through the world to touch and see it all, it was only right and proper that some of his new knowledge, some of this special vintage day would be sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks or months and perhaps some of the miracle by then forgotten and in need of renewal. Since this was going to be a summer of unguessed wonders, he wanted it all salvaged and leveled so that any time he wished, he might tiptoe down in this dank twilight and reach up his fingertips.
And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine.

Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.

Dandelion wine represents the power of memory and nostalgia - it is a way for the boys to have something physical to preserve the memories they will make all summer. They are meant to savor each memory.

I could go on and on describing the rites and discoveries of summer and the people of the town who help add uniqueness to this summer of being alive but it’s best to experience it for yourself. It is a world that is inhabited by the pure joy and thrill of boys (Douglas and his brother Tom, 10) and how they experience circumstances that are important to them in the summer of 1928. There is plenty of Bradbury’s trademark fantasy throughout. He does not simply give us a straightforward story about a wonderfully nostalgic summer. Concepts such as thinking that old people were never really young, that a happiness machine would make life better, and that people let you down are hard to learn. There is also a darker side he explores that will cause Douglas to wonder about the stability of life and that nothing stays the same forever, people grow up and life will come to an end.

My favorite stories were about grandma and great grandma. Bradbury’s prose is gorgeous and heartfelt. Seen through the eyes of Douglas, grandma was a wonder woman.

She was a woman with a broom or a dustpan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You saw her cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or you saw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in, cool, at dusk.

She glided through the halls as steadily as a vacuum machine, seeking, finding, putting to rights.