Ray Bradbury: A Master of Saying it His Own Way

Although my children are old enough not to need to be read aloud to every night before bed, when holidays come around I'm cajoled temporarily into old bed time habits again. In the spirit of ghosts and ghouls, we enjoyed Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree last week. His way with words--personification, imagery, metaphor and unique observations--delight all the senses.

The wind doesn't just blow. "The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like cats."

Boys don't just run around in the dark: "Shrieking, wailing, full of banshee mirth they ran, on everything except sidewalks, going up into the air over bushes and down almost upon yipping dogs."

The boy of all boys to be revered is memorably described. "The day Joe Pipkin was born all Orange Crush and Nehi soda bottles in the world fizzed over."

Instead of merely saying the boys go back thousands of years in time, Bradbury entices the reader to experience it with them: "The moon began to blink. It closed up its eye and there was darkness. Then faster and faster it began to wink to wax, to wane, to wax again. Until a thousand times over it flickered and in flickering changed the landscape below, and then fifty thousand times, so fast they could not see it, the moon extinguished and relit itself."

The story captures the magic of being let loose, unaccompanied by adults, on Halloween night for trick or treating.
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The mistake for this week comes from an article I read on KSL.com tonight.

The first mistake is a sentence with an extra who that makes it a tad unnecessary.

  Consider it the ultimate in concierge service for parents, who can hand off their little ones to crew members who have been trained to care for their children.

The second who can be omitted and the sentence would flow better.
Consider it the ultimate in concierge service for parents who can hand off their little ones to crew members trained to care for their children.

The next mistake is obvious.

The nannies are obvious by their orange aprons, and even trained are even trained in child psychology.

Oops! How about:

The nannies are obvious by their orange aprons, and even trained in child psychology. 

I didn't even finish the article. I wasn't that interested in the first place, but even less so after such a silly mistake.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=32016639&nid=1009&title=kid-friendly-flying-airline-offers-on-board-nannies&s_cid=queue-5