Goosebumps: The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb by RL Stine

Published January, 1993.

Gabe just got lost - in a pyramid. One minute, his crazy cousin Sari was right ahead of him in the pyramid tunnel. The next minute, she'd disappeared.

But Gabe isn't alone. Someone else is in the pyramid, too.

Someone. Or some thing.

Gabe doesn't believe in the curse of the mummy's tomb. But that doesn't mean that the curse isn't real.

Does it? (book back blurb)

As much as I love all things Egyptian, I have to say this isn't one of my favorite GOOSEBUMPS books. The Idiot Adult Syndrome runs a little too high for my liking in this one. For instance, right at the beginning, Gabe's father asks Gabe how he thinks the pyramids were built. His father then reminds him that the Egyptians didn't even have the wheel. Now I don't know if this was an editorial oversight or a comment on just how dumb Gabe's parents are but they're supposed to be successful business people. So I don't know. And Gabe's archaeologist uncle had some serious TSTL moments. Far too many for his own good.

I get it. The kids are supposed to save the day and all but this one goes a bit too far to make the parents look incompetent where the kids would have to step in and save the day. It just ended up being a bit TOO silly for me. I can take some silly. I wouldn't be reading GOOSEBUMPS if I couldn't. But this one's at the top of the ladder.

I also wasn't too thrilled with the characters so I didn't have that to fall back on. Gabe is a bit of a whiny brat and Sari is a spoiled brat. Neither exhibit real redeeming qualities at all and while there's some growth, I think it comes too little and a bit too late.

It's good for the Egypt factor. It paints a great picture of the artifacts and the dig site and all of the mummies. It's got some good exciting moments where you don't know if the kids are going to make it or not (with RL Stine that's not always a given). But MUMMY'S TOMB isn't at the top of my GOOSEBUMPS list. Thankfully there are a ton more to more than make up for it.

Ban Factor: High - Horror always equals high. Considering this one includes ancient Egypt and mummies' curses, it's bound to be some kind of heathen in the banners' eyes.

Goosebumps: Ghost Beach by RL Stine

Published August, 1994.

Jerry can't wait to explore the dark, spooky old cave he found down by the beach.

Then the other kids tell him a story. A story about a ghost who is three hundred years old.

A ghost who comes out when the moon is full.

A ghost . . . who lives deep inside the cave!

Jerry knows that it's just another silly made-up ghost story . . .

Isn't it? (book back blurb)

Another piece of awesome from RL Stine. Even for a middle grade book, he really doesn't pull any punches.

Sure there are some cheesy moments. Some kooky senses of humor being thrown about. A lot of spooky moments that turn out to be something not so spooky after all. But it all comes back around in the end, leaving everything hanging, including Jerry and his sister!

Stine's got the MG voice down pat. He doesn't dumb it down for the reader and he doesn't skimp on the spook. He targets an age that he knows needs a bit of a goof but isn't afraid to get scared too. And I have to say it again, it all comes back to the ending. It was fantastic! You'll probably see it coming but where Stine leaves the story off, you have to give him credit for it. No nice neat, tidy endings for him.

GOOSEBUMPS is a great series to get the young ones hooked on horror early. It'll help develop their appreciation for the spookier things in life. My entry into the horror realm wasn't so subtle (Poltergeist at age 4, The Exorcist at age 6) so by the time I got to reading these books, they were old hat and far beneath my horror comprehension. But for the better protected youth who needs their horror a touch watered down but not entirely forgiving, GOOSEBUMPS is the way to go and GHOST BEACH is an excellent addition to that classic series.

Ban Factor: Medium - It's horror. It'll be on the banners' radar just for that. Age inappropriate or whatever. But there are sure to be other books at the front of their list. GOOSEBUMPS is a bit tame for them.

Fear: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror, edited by RL Stine

Published September 2010.

Turn the pages if you dare. . . .In this collection of thirteen fabulously chilling stories--from thirteen true masters of suspense, including five New York Times bestsellers and a number of Edgar Award nominees, all edited by none other than R. L. Stine--nothing is what it seems. From cannibalistic children, to an unwitting date with a vampire, to a crush on a boy who just might be a werewolf, no scary stone is left unturned. A must-have for all fans of the genre! (goodreads.com)

Holy snot monkeys, I LOVE YA horror. The category is sorely lacking in all that is horror. Even if it's more compilations like FEAR, I'll take it. It makes me want to curl myself up in a blanket of nostalgia with a flashlight and read all night.

I always find it a little difficult to review anthologies like this because the writing in each story can vary so widely and quite frankly I don't want to nitpick short stories. So I'll review the book as a whole: phenomenal.

Stine knows his fear so when he rounded up his choices for this book, he hit each nail spot on the head in one single stroke. Each story was mired in creep factor but not all of them were your traditional horror stories, which I liked. As much as I love my classic horror, variety is always good. So while you have the creepy family living in the even creepier old Victorian next door, you have an issue with disappearing people on a planet filled with rich people. For each story the creep is distinct and will affect you in 13 different ways, each story with it's own unique bucket of creep.

My favorites were 'Welcome to the Club' by RL Stine (more of a psychological horror that makes you think, nothing paranormal which, I think, makes it scarier, using "normal" humans), 'Dragonfly Eyes' by Alane Ferguson (about a girl's death from her point of view post mortem), and 'Tagger' by James Rollins (about a Chinese girl dipping into her roots to destroy a demon intent on destroying her). Each are miles away from each other in terms of story but the creeper aspect brings them all back together.

If you have a night to yourself and are looking for a good scare with hints of nostalgia, pick up FEAR. It has every kind of horror story sampler you could want all wrapped up in 13 nicely pressed stories. The writing in each of them stands out as fantastic and each is written in such a way that it allows the horror to settled at the top, letting it be as spooky as it can be. I love it.

Ban Factor: High - I think horror gets an automatic high usually because it's dealing with something supernatural, usually has some kind of sex factor, swearing, and lots of killing. Banner heart attack central.

The New Girl by RL Stine

Published June 1989.

She's pale as a ghost, blonde and eerily beautiful - and she seems to need him as much as he wants her. Cory Brooks hungers for Anna Corwin's kisses, drowns in her light blue eyes.

He can't get her out of his mind. And the trouble has only begun. Shadyside High's star gymnast is losing sleep, skipping practice and acting weird. All the guys have noticed, but only Cory's friend Lisa knows the truth: Anna Corwin is dead and living on Fear Street. Now Cory must explore its menacing darkness to discover the truth. He has already been warned: come to Fear Street and you're dead! (book back blurb)

The book turned out to be not nearly as sinister as the blurb intones but it had its creeptastic moments all the same. Stine knows how to build suspense and keep the reader hanging as the plot moves along. Really, it's no wonder he's been putting out books for so long. He doesn't have an underlying evil about his writing like Stephen King does but it's spooky. It does the trick if you happen to be young and reading it in the dark. It gets under your skin just enough that you turn the light on an extra notch and settle back in to read.

THE NEW GIRL is the first book in the Fear Street series and I'd say (while I've read them way out of order) this would be a pretty good start. If I happened to be a young teen wandering a book store in the late 80s and picked it up, I'd totally get hooked on the series (because I haven't done it now, obviously, O_o). It's sort of your typical ghost story with the spooky street and the creepy houses and the scary stories that all of the locals grew up with. It's a great beginning and scene-setter to get it all rolling. There's a curse around Fear Street, and here's why.

Now, I wouldn't peg Cory as dumb but he was definitely oblivious to the point of me wanting to smack him upside the head. Whether he just developed some serious tunnel vision or really only had a one track mind, if Cory saw one way, there just wasn't any other way to see it. And I felt for Lisa because she was trying to break through that egg shell head of his and it just wasn't working for 99% of the book. Only after the revelation at the end did Cory finally come around and see a light outside of his own closet.

The ending was a bit disappointing for me because it kind of watered down the rest of the story but it was decent enough. It could have been a hell of a lot worse but there are other avenues that Stine could have taken the plot that would have made is much creepier. But that's pretty classic Stine: a lot of build-up with a nominally happy ending and a pretty rational explanation for everything. Well, as rational as a horror book can get. You come to expect it reading his work.

THE NEW GIRL is a great addition to any cheese lover's library, especially if you can snag a first printing paperback like I have. :) If nothing else it'll make you nostalgic for a time when you didn't have much else to worry about so you could curl up under the blankets with a flashlight and read horror to your heart's content.

Ban Factor: Medium - No swearing, pretty minimal in any kind of sexual innuendo and at the end of the day it's supernatural free, the banners would have a hard time finding something to hate about this one. But that's assuming they'd actually read the book. On first glance, the ban factor would be high since it's horror so it must be totally atrocious.

The Prom Queen by RL Stine

Published March, 1992.

A spring night . . . soft moonlight . . . five beautiful Prom Queen candidates . . . dancing couples at the Shadyside High prom - these should be the ingredients for romance.

But stir in one brutal murder - then another, and another - and the recipe quickly turns to horror.

Lizzie McVay realizes that someone is murdering the five Prom Queen candidates one by one - and that she may be next on the list! Can she stop the murderer before the dance is over - for good? (book back blurb)

Despite the fact that none of the characters are all that likable, THE PROM QUEEN is still en epic foray into old school cheese. I seriously just can't get enough of these books.

For the bad, the characters really aren't redeeming. They all go on dates with one of their friends' boyfriends behind her back and they do it shamelessly. They're all self-centered, one's exceptionally bitter and it's not like these girls have revelations at the end of the book that fix these issues. That's just how they are. They're just not appealing.

But the plot? Pretty awesome. I was definitely wrapped up in it, trying to figure out who the murderer was and why. Quite frankly a plot to kill prom queens is kind of dumb but the girls come up with some pretty good motives for why. None of them were right but at least their heads were in the right place.

I didn't see coming who the murderer was. Even in hindsight it was hidden pretty well. Granted I don't actively look for this kind of stuff and I'm not someone that picks up on it too easily so someone else could rightly guess the murderer immediately. I didn't and was kind of shocked when I did find out.

You guys know me by now; I'm a sucker for cheese and THE PROM QUEEN has it in spades. But I love it. Despite it's gouda essence, it'll still make you think twice about sitting in your room alone at night. It'll still make you wonder about your friends. It's still a good horror book and I've said it before and I'll say it again, the YA world needs far more of them.

Party Summer by RL Stine

Published May 1, 1991.

Cari Taylor and her three friends look forward to a "party summer," working at The Howling Wolf Inn, an old hotel on a tiny island off Cape Cod. But to their dismay, the hotel is completely deserted, and someone warns them to leave immediately.

The mysterious owner, Simon Fear III, allows Cari and her friends to stay, giving them the run of the hotel. The four teenagers are thrilled . . . until they realize they have been put up in the "haunted wing" . . . until Simon's weird and frightening brother appears . . . until they hear a woman screaming, "No party--please, no party!" . . . until the walls and faucets begin to drip blood!

When Simon Fear is murdered, Cari and her horrified friends want out. But they can't escape! They're trapped on the island. And that's when the "party" begins . . . (book back blurb)

Why would something be put in the back blurb when it wasn't in the book at all? There's an element in the blurb above that just doesn't exist in the story. That's like the non-sequential events on the back of Christopher Pike's Immortal. Very weird. And talk about misleading. It didn't detract from the story any but I can't help but wonder why.

Pike and Stine have very similar writing styles although I think Stine is a little more kiddish, even in his YA books. It doesn't hurt the story but I think it hinders the storytelling just a little bit. So much more could be put into it if the aim was a little higher.

But it was creepy enough. It had me on the edge of my seat at the end of a lot of the chapters. I didn't want to stop reading when something crazy was about to happen! Damn hour lunches! And it was creepy. It carried that sense of foreboding with it, that anything could happen to anyone. No one was safe.

When people start disappearing and strange events started happening, your comfort zone gets destroyed and the more the story gets into it, the more unsure you get of the characters' survival. Will they make it?

The supernatural elements are kept to a barely there minimum; yet even more proof that you don't need insanely spooky stuff to be not of this world. Sometimes other humans are all that you need to be totally creeped out.

Whether its the short, almost choppy sentences or the fact that nearly every chapter ends on a cliffhanger, Stine's writing is compelling. You'll want to figure out what's going on, and fast. The events are as grounded in reality as a cheesy teen horror book can be grounded in reality and I think that makes it all the more frightening. Who wouldn't want to go fart around a private island in a swanky hotel? The very premise is the start of how many good horror stories? But it's what's done with it that makes it truly horrifying and Stine does an awesome job. The horror is in the helplessness and it'll have you clawing at the pages until you know just how it all ends.

Goosebumps: Welcome to Camp Nightmare by RL Stine

First published in 1993.

The food isn't great. The counselors are a little strange. And the camp director, Uncle Al, seems sort of demented.

Okay, so Billy can handle all that.

But then his fellow campers start to disappear.

What's going on? Why won't his parents answer his letters? What's lurking out there after dark?

Camp Nightmoon is turning into Camp Nightmare!

And Billy might be next . . . (book back blurb)

The last time I read any of these books I was actually of target age to read them. So yeah, it's been a while. And while I couldn't get totally engrossed in it like I used to, it still kicked major ass. I really don't think RL Stine can do much by the way of wrong.

The writing is very simple and I think reflects the era of middle grade it was written in. If you compare it against MG of today, I don't even think it'd really qualify for that shelf space (although it still does). But even apart from the simplicity, it's still masterful at telling the story. Heavy emphasis on telling. But really, I didn't mind it. I could still visualize everything. I didn't feel like I was being talked at. I felt like I was being told a story by a twelve-year-old boy, which I'm pretty sure was the point. The language isn't disingenuous to the age at all (as I feel a lot of MG and YA can be) and it just sticks to telling the story how a twelve-year-old would tell it without fluffing it up.

I can't remember how quickly I caught on to the catch when I was in that age bracket (if I did at all) but I felt it was pretty obvious right from the outset. What I didn't see coming, and it was something I'd completely forgotten, was the very end. The story had a twist plus a triple axle. Totally awesome.

It had all the creepy elements required of telling a good spooky story but not so much that you'd end up shrieking like a banshee at the drop of a pin. Although it might make you freak out about the woods a little. For me, though, I don't need much help with that. Stine keeps the horror hidden and hinted at. We never get a really good look at these supposed creatures and the inaction of the counselors is far scarier than some true-to-form demon thing.

I'm so glad Goosebumps has transcended time like it has. This book is closing in on twenty years old! OMFG! I have to stop dating myself! But really, they're timeless. There's nothing in the story that dates it to a certain time. I don't think Stine felt a need to name drop like a lot of authors do today so his stories fared better. All the more power to them. It just means that more and more generations will grow up loving Goosebumps! Always a plus.