Dandelion Wine

  My New Favorite Book

Amanda Evans of Oregon, 10/24/2010

It is the summer of 1928 in a small midwest town and 12-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows he’s alive. From the first cutting of the lawn to the new pair of sneakers, he is going to live this season. But Dandelion Wine isn’t just about the antics of a pack of boys enjoying sunny weather and no school. There is sickness, death, aging, loss of friends. There is ice cream too, and Grandma’s cooking. And there are dandelions to be made into warm yellow wine which brings you a taste of summer when you drink it on cold winter nights.

This is my new favorite book. It took me months to read but that’s because I didn’t want it to end. Every chapter spoke to me and I was afraid to read the next because I didn’t want it to be less impacting. I don’t think I was disappointed once. Reading it made my heart swell to bursting with both the joy of living and the sadness of growing old. And yet it showed me that living is not always joyful and dying is not always sad. The tears I cried were both happy and sorrowful. Just as summer turns into fall, the turning of the pages brought me to the end at last. But that’s okay because I will probably be reading it again next year.