This book is almost like OG American Gods. Not really, but it does share the kind of mythopoeic qualities of gods and goddesses of other cultures wrapped a kind of metanarrative/ meta-worldview.
This is a novel written for children, and I was curious about finding out when it was published (I was listening to the audiobook) and I waited until after I finished. It turns out it was published in 1972. I also wonder if maybe I read this when I was a kid, though I don’t have any explicit memory of doing so. Anyway, it’s Halloween and a group of town boys go out in costume. As they’re leaving they realize that don’t have their lead boy, Pipkin, the most beloved and dynamic of their friends. As they go to find him, he comes out, but he’s clearly ailing. It will turn out to be the case that he’s dying, and given that it’s Halloween, they are brought along a journey to save his soul from death. Along the way, they have a spiritual guide named Moundshroud and are taken through multiple Halloween/Death/Holiday/Ritualistic words seeking their friend.
What’s great about this book is how interchangeable all the boys are who aren’t Pipkin, and there’s a bunch of them. In order to make this work, Bradbury often refers to them through their costumes, which also allows for a discussion of history of whatever original image that costume happens to be based on.
The book reminds me a lot of Stephen King, when he’s talking about kids, and it’s also interesting to see Halloween from a different, significantly less commercial time period from our own, and even my own childhood, 1980s.
(Photo: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/512847476290732460/)
When I saw the animated movie (I think I was in my early teens) I thought it was pretty cool. However, the book is so much darker somehow. I am glad I waited until I was an adult to read it.