Ever on the alert for the mellifluous metaphor, the sizzling simile that strikes to the heart, runs upstairs to the brain, finds a corner and settles in forever, I find Bradbury to be generous of creative use in smoothing the story with delightful images based on these elements of writing.
That said, there’s a couple of what to me sound like clunkers:
(…)Will slung off limp-falling clothes with tipsy arms and delightfully aching legs, and like a fall of timber chopped himself to bed… (p. 140)
So you know, you feel, you are sure, lying abed, that a balloon is submerging the ocean sky. (p. 142)
"chopped himself to bed?"
"a balloon is submerging the ocean sky?"
The first just doesn’t make much sense, at least without a real stretch of imagination which is counterproductive to the purpose of metaphor. On the second, I think what Bradbury means is that the balloon, drawing closer, getting bigger, blocks out the sky. To call that submerging is again, asking a bit more of what was sounding pretty neat up to that point. It also would seem that Bradbury is telling us the balloon is taking in or covering (submerging) the "ocean sky," so there’s a conflict of meaning right there with the use of the word "ocean."
It’s little things like that that can halt you in your tracks. In the meantime, I got to use lots of alliteration in the opening paragraph of this post.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology