From the Dust Returned is, in a lot of ways, the book of my heart. I’ve written about my love for it before and probably will again after this, too. It’s a fix-up featuring some stories that Bradbury originally wrote to—get this—pair with illustrations by none other than Charles Addams, about a strange and wondrous family. That project fell apart but I find it very charming that the two men went on to create their own iterations of the idea. This particular story is the centerpiece of the book and I think it is also one of Bradbury’s very best, managing to capture the excitement and slight terror of being a child looking at the magical world of grown-ups. It’s a story that I’m always, in one way or another, writing towards.
First published in Mademoiselle, October 1946. Collected in From the Dust Returned, William Morrow, 2001
A Personal Anthology 