Ray Bradbury

Essay by Anonymous UserHigh School, 10th gradeA-, June 1996

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Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury was a dreamer. Bradbury had a skill at putting his dreams onto paper, and

into books. He dreams dreams of magic and transformation, good and evil, small-town America

and the canals of Mars. His dreams are not only popular, but durable. His work consists of short

stories, which are not hard to publish, and keep in the public eye. His stories have stayed in print

for nearly three decades.

Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in a small town of Waukegan, Illinois. His

parents were Leonard Spaulding and Esther Moberg Bradbury. His mother, Esther Moberg loved

films, she gave her son the middle name Douglas because of Douglas Fairbanks, and she passed

her love of films to her son. 'My mother took me to see everything.....' Bradbury explains, 'I'm a

child of motion pictures.' Prophetically, the first film he saw, at the age of three, was the horror

classic 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', staring Lon Chanley.

His teenage Aunt Neva gave the

boy his appreciation of fantasy, by reading him the Oz books, when he was six. When Bradbury

was a child he was encouraged to read the classic, Norse, Roman, and Greek Myths. When he was

old enough to choose his own reading materials, he chose books by Edger Rice Burroughs and the

comic book heroes Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Prince Valiant. When Bradbury was in

Waukegan he developed his interest in acting and Drama. After seeing a magician, known as

Blackstone, he became fascinated with magic also.

In 1932, his family moved to Tucson Arizona. With his talents he learned in Waukegan

(amateur magician) he got a job at the local radio station. 'I was on the radio every Saturday night

reading comic strips to the kiddies and...