Sunday, June 6, 2010

R.L. STINE BOOK OF THE WEEK: Goosebumps: Welcome to Dead House

It will just kill you.

From the back cover:

LOOK ALIVE!

Amanda and Josh think the old house they have just moved into is weird. Spooky. Possibly haunted. And the town of Dark Falls is pretty strange, too.

But their parents don't believe them. You'll get used to it, they say. Go out and make some new friends.

So Amanda and Josh do. But these new friends are not exactly what their parents had in mind.

Because they want to be friends...

...forever.

My thoughts:

Here's the book that started it all - the first Goosebumps book. I vaguely remember not liking this book when I first read it years ago, but I enjoyed it this time - after I got through the boring beginning.

Compared to the other Goosebumps books I've read, Welcome to Dead House has more gore and disturbing scenes, including a midnight trip to a cemetery, the mention of drinking blood and even a dead animal.

Welcome to Dead House has a slow build-up, and I was pretty bored until about halfway through the book (which is probably why I didn't like it when I was younger). I even fell asleep twice while attempting to get through it. Nothing other than a few ghost sightings and Amanda thinking she's crazy happens until the halfway point . But after the creepy venture to the cemetery, the book becomes suspenseful.

Although it's a bit slow in the beginning, the gore at the end makes up for it, and is probably the reason so many kids (or at least kids like me) got hooked on the series.

Rating: 4/5

PG gore: Ray's skin seemed to be melting. His whole face sagged, then fell, dropping off his skull.

I stared into the circle of white light, unable to look away, as Ray's skin folded and drooped and melted away. As the bone underneath was revealed, his eyeballs rolled out of their sockets and fell silently to the ground.

Josh, frozen in horror, somehow held the bright light steady, and we both stared at the grinning skull, its dark craters staring back at us.

Next week: Goosebumps: Stay out of the Basement

2 comments:

Jessica Penot said...

Yay! Another Goosebumps. I read this one with my boys last year. It was one of their favorites.

Will Errickson said...

I worked in bookstores throughout the '90s when these were ridiculously popular. Glad to see know that they turned some people onto adult horror and that it wasn't just a phase!