R.L. STINE BOOK OF THE WEEK: Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy

He walks. He stalks...

From the back cover: HE'S NO DUMMY!

Lindy names the ventriloquist's dummy she finds Slappy. Slappy is kind of ugly, but he's a lot of fun. Lindy's having a great time learning to make Slappy move and talk.

But Kris is jealous of all the attention her sister is getting. It's no fair. Why does Lindy always have all the luck?

Kris decides to get a dummy of her own. She'll show Kris.

Then weird things begin to happen. Nasty things. Evil things.

No way a dummy can be causing all the trouble.

Or is there?

My thoughts:

First of all, that wasn't a typo. Apparently Kris will show Kris. I can't believe they made a mistake on the back cover of the book. If it had been any other book, that would have deterred me from reading it, but I remember the Night of the Living Dummy series as being my favourite as a child.

It isn't as exciting as I remember. The main characters are twins who spend the entire book fighting and trying to one-up each other, which is pretty boring. The dummies don't actually come to life until the last few chapters.

But when the dummies come to life it becomes compelling. The scariest part is that no one believes Kris. What creeps me out the most about an inanimate object coming to life is that everyone would think you are crazy, leaving you alone with the evil thing.

Overall, a pretty good Goosebumps book. Although it's a bit slow, Slappy is one of R.L.'s greatest villains.

Rating: 4/5

PG Gore: The dummy's head tilted back. His jaw dropped. His mouth opened wide.

And a thick green liquid came spewing out.

"Yuck!" someone screamed.

It looked like pea soup. It spurted up out of Mr. Wood's open mouth like water rushing from a fire hose.

Voices screamed and cried out their surprise as the thick, green liquid showered over the people in the front rows.

"Stop it!"

"Help!"

"Somebody - turn it off!"

"It stinks!"

Kris froze in horror, staring as more and more of the disgusting substance poured from her dummy's gaping mouth.

A putrid stench - the smell of sour milk, of rotten eggs, of burning rubber, of decayed meat - rose up from the liquid. It puddled over the stage and showered over the front seats.

Next week: Goosebumps: Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes