Sunday, February 21, 2010

R.L. STINE BOOK OF THE WEEK: Goosebumps: Monster Blood

It's a monster blood drive!

From the back cover:

BLOOD, BLOOD, EVERYWHERE...

While staying with his weird great-aunt Kathryn, Evan visits a funky old toy store and buys a dusty can of monster blood. It's fun to play with at first. And Evan's dog, Trigger, likes it so much, he eats some!

But then Evan notices something weird about the green, slimy stuff - it seems to be growing.

And growing.

And growing.

And all that growing has given the monster blood a monstrous appetite.

My thoughts:

I struggled to get through this one, which was a surprise since I really enjoyed the last two Goosebumps books I've read.

Nothing really happens. Evan buys monster blood and it keeps growing. That's pretty much it until the last few chapters. Oh, and his dog gets bigger. Not really exciting...pretty much just like Honey I Blew Up the Kid, only the dog doesn't grow as large as the kid. And the shocking twist wasn't very shocking and didn't make much sense.

Even though it was dull for the most part, the last few chapters were exciting when the monster blood became like the blob and devoured everything in its path. So I guess it deserves a 2 instead of a 1.

Rating: 2/5

PG gore: "Plop. Plop. Plop.

A robin pulling at a worm in the grass, didn't look up in time. The trembling green mass rolled over it.

"Oh!" Evan moaned, turning back to see the bird sucked into the green ball. Its wings flapping frantically, the bird uttered a final cry, then disappeared inside."

Published in: 1992

Evident by references to: Nintendo, a VCR

Next week: Monster Blood II *sigh* not looking forward to this one...

2 comments:

Fear Street said...

This is one of my least favorite Goosebumps books. Even when I was younger, I hated it which is saying something because I was pretty much obsessed with anything Stine wrote.

Monster Blood 2 isn't as bad...if you like giant hamsters :)

Sadako said...

Agreed, Fear Street. I was never into the whole Monster Blood series. It was kind of like, "OK, Stine, we get it, you like monsters, now make with a real book." Kind of wish he'd actually written monster blood on a plane, though...that was just an ep.