R.L. Stine Book of the Week

Since I have a passion for nostalgia, I have decided to re-read all R.L. Stine's books. Beginning tomorrow, I will start a new feature called "R.L. Stine Book of the Week", where I will review an R.L. Stine book every Sunday.

I remember way back in Grade 3 and Grade 4 we would have a library period and all the kids would fight over the Goosebumps books. I can still recall a few of my favourites. It Came From Beneath the Sink!, which was about an evil sponge; The Girl Who Cried Monster, I still remember the twist ending where her parents turn out to be monsters; and the Night of the Living Dummy books because I love killer dolls. And I loved Stine's Goosebumps spin-off, Give Yourself Goosebumps, which were choose your own ending books. But I always cheated and kept my finger on the page and turned back if I died.

I also read every Goosebumps rip-off I could get my hands on. And there were a lot of them: Bone Chillers, Shivers, Phantom Valley, Spooksville. But all of them had happy endings instead of Stine's Twilight Zone-y endings.

I stopped reading Goosebumps around Beware, The Snowman (which is pretty good, #51 out of 62) and graduated to Stine's teen series Fear Street, which is a more grown up version of Goosebumps minus the crazy twist endings and with a little gore added. When I began high school, I made my first friend by bonding over Fear Street books in English class. I was completely obsessed with his Cheerleaders series.

And again I read anything similar: any Point Horror book (Diane Hoh, Caroline B. Cooney, Richie Tankersley Cusick, etc.), the Nightmare Hall series, Christopher Pike. Eventually I graduated to Stephen King, but I really have to thank R.L. Stine for my obsession with horror.