Previous SFF Author: Maggie Stiefvater
R.L. Stine has more than 350 million English language books in print, plus international editions in 32 languages, making him one of the most popular children’s authors in history. Besides GOOSEBUMPS, R.L. Stine has written other series, including FEAR STREET, ROTTEN SCHOOL, MOSTLY GHOSTLY, THE NIGHTMARE ROOM, and DANGEROUS GIRLS. R.L. Stine lives in New York with his wife, Jane. Visit him online at www.rlstine.com.
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Stay Out of the Basement by R.L. Stine
One of my kids loves Halloween – she starts celebrating in September – and, since she wanted to read some horror for children during October, we listened to a few of R.L. Stine’s GOOSEBUMPS books together. Each is a standalone short novel with a pretty hefty scare factor.
Stay Out of the Basement (1992) is the second novel in the series (which contains dozens of stories) and there’s no reason to read the first one first.
Kat Hooper´s rating: 2.5 | R.L. Stine | Audio, Children, Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Monster Blood (1992) is the third short children’s horror novel in R.L. Stine’s GOOSEBUMPS series. It’s a stand-alone, so no need to read the previous books.
While his parents are out of town, Evan has to go live with Aunt Katherine. She’s a scary one — a large hulking deaf woman with a deep voice who is often seen carrying her meat cleaver. Evan hates living at Aunt Katherine’s house, especially because she insists that his elderly dog stay chained up outside and there are bullies in Aunt Katherine’s neighborhood.
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | R.L. Stine | Audio, Children, Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Night of the Living Dummy by R.L. Stine
R.L. Stine’s GOOSEBUMPS is a series of stand-alone short horror novels for children. I’ve been listening to the audiobook versions with my teenage daughter who loves to read scary stories in the couple of months before Halloween.
The seventh GOOSEBUMPS novel, Night of the Living Dummy (1993), is especially terrifying, but that may be because I’m one of those people who gets a bit freaked out by circus clowns, Chucky dolls,
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | R.L. Stine | Audio, Children, Horror | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
You May Now Kill the Bride by R.L. Stine
If you’re an adult who enjoyed R.L. Stine’s GOOSEBUMPS series as a kid and/or his FEAR STREET series as a teenager, then his new RETURN TO FEAR STREET series, beginning with You May Now Kill the Bride (2018), will surely pluck some of your nostalgic heart-strings. (The distressed, much-read appearance of the cover is an obvious nod to that very appeal.) I devoured Stine’s work as a young reader, so I wondered,
Jana Nyman´s rating: 3 | R.L. Stine | Horror, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Scream and Scream Again! edited by R.L. Stine
Scream and Scream Again!: Spooky Stories from Mystery Writers of America (2018) is a short-form horror anthology in which “every story begins or ends with a scream,” and its twenty contributors are all members of Mystery Writers of America, an organization “dedicated to promoting higher regard for crime writing and recognition and respect for those who write within the genre.” The anthology is edited by R.L. Stine, himself a contributing author, and the overall age range of its protagonists and general subject matter mark it firmly as suitable for the pre-teen and early-teen crowd.
Jana Nyman´s rating: 3 | Beth Fantaskey, Heather Graham, R.L. Stine | Children, Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Previous SFF Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…
this sounds like a fun one