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Spinetinglers #5
Check It Out - And Die!
Dare to read.
Ms. Gunkel, the strange-looking new school librarian, lets kids read horror books. Any one they want. She even has her own special collection, and she just loves to share a spooky tale with any kid willing to take a chance. Charlie and his friend Duston grabbed the scariest ones, and now they're running for their lives. Five other kids have disappeared. If it were up to Ms. Gunkel, every kid would be reading--until there were no more kids left!
Ms. Gunkel, the strange-looking new school librarian, lets kids read horror books. Any one they want. She even has her own special collection, and she just loves to share a spooky tale with any kid willing to take a chance. Charlie and his friend Duston grabbed the scariest ones, and now they're running for their lives. Five other kids have disappeared. If it were up to Ms. Gunkel, every kid would be reading--until there were no more kids left!
- GenresHorrorBooks About Books
151 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
64 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 6, 2021
This was by far the best of the Spinetinglers books I've read. As a horror-loving school librarian I saw the cover and couldn't resist; I was not disappointed!
November 10, 2025
I’ve heard great things about this ‘Tingler, so I was pretty disappointed to find that this one was just repetitive roughly-written insanity with a million coincidences/nonsensical things. Seriously, this one tested my nitpickery, and I could go on for hours about all the things in this book that just didn’t make sense or didn’t jive with me. There are some good things here, however: Charlie is a legitimately brave and likable protagonist. He puts himself in crazy danger to save randos from school, and I can’t help but find his character to be super admirable, let alone he’s a horror literature geek like me (though I like middle grade horror lol). The first sixth of the book was pretty solid, from good exposition and it just not being a disaster some like the rest kinda was. The ending was a nice touch and I indeed called it the minute the cause of it occurred about fifty pages prior. And to give this book as much credit as I can before I go full throttle and the ranting, I do wanna say I saw the vision here. I get what the author was going for and I quite liked the concept of the book, and there’s some intriguing details behind it all. However, I think this would’ve favored heavily if done by another author—my apologies, George Edward Stanley. So… I can barely see the hype for this book, with the idea behind it all, but I pray I’m not alone when I say this… this was an absolute mess. BAM—the mechanics are extremely loose; the werwolf story is a choose-your-own-adventure book yet it affects nothing (wasted potential there); Ms. Grunkel is disappointing; the kids “get punished” at the end by the school and their parents, which literally doesn’t make ANY sense in context of what they told them; there’s a moment in here where they just walk into an open grave… from the grave itself…the fuck? No one digging it up noticed the (spoiler) giant library/basement…?; we don’t get a satisfactory defeat for the larger threat of the book, revealed around the end; who was in that coffin from the beginning? WE NEVER FIND OUT, and it makes less sense with the big reveal of what the books are and what’s going on (because we sure as hell saw a human, not a book with arms and legs); the rescue segments are repetitive and dull, and they took me out of the story (I wish we got something else, in other words); the innuendo at the very end with a certain smaller character feels random; the girls’ belief of Charlie’s crud about the books is super forced and unbelievable; the pure chance that everything went horrendously well when it comes to SHEER LUCK TIMING drove me crazy; the writing is some of the weakest of the series, as it seems G. E. Stanley can be pretty iffy, and this is some of his lesser work in my opinion; the climax in Ms. Grunkel’s basement had a few typos alongside a decrease in the writing’s already eh quality; the reveal about the books and what they are doesn’t make sense at all in reason with the whole duplicate mechanic; duplicate mechanic didn’t make much sense from the get-go and it even points it out at one point… and drops it immediately—wow; the climax in the basement is kind of useless in retrospective; the absolute sheer chance the kids find the exact points in these books where the kids trapped within are at is just reaching new highs of oblivious insanity; the day-jump around the mid portion of the book makes no sense with the knowledge that the events of the books happen in real time; the time correlation from book-to-reality is finicky and is apparently accurate in both worlds, however, it gets f’d six ways from Sunday near the end when it reveals they went into three stories in the span of ELEVEN HOURS. WHAT. THE. FUCK. IS. GOING. ON; and I’m done, man… this book has legitimately given me more to dissect than an aborted fetus with a beard and a bag of Cheetos. Uuduk, give comfort… overall, 3.5/10. I wanted so desperately to like this one but the sheer count of nitpicks I had after the first sixth of the book is just diabolical, rancid, depraved and revolting. Never in my life, man… zooweemama, I need to shower. Don’t check it out, because if you happen to agree with my takes at the end of it, you too may die.
November 10, 2025
Ripoff Round 3 for the year trucks on with some Spinetinglers. I found this one in the wild a few years ago and was one of my more anticipated to read. Mostly due to the premise and that front tagline: “You’ll get more than Goosebumps when you read this book!”
Subtle. Perhaps the most blatant nod of its type we’ve seen in these. The ghostwriter today is George Edward Stanley, who keeps popping up lol. I like his larger scale stories so let’s see how this measures up.
Charlie and his friends love horror books. Their librarian doesn’t though, so they are banned. The kids from a horror book club but one day the librarian is out sick. In her place is a sub named Mrs Gunkel (not the winner of the funkle bunkle) who allows horror books and even starts a horror book club of her own, which the kids are invited to. She brings a horror collection of her own.
However, when Charlie starts reading, he finds himself literally sucked into the story. He gets himself out but the others are more hit or miss and now they must free them and figure out what Gunkle’s whole deal is.
I heard some good things about this one and while I did like it, it was a bit a let down compared to what I expected. I will say the latter half makes up for most of it. Once it really gets into it, it’s pretty fun. The back half is non-stop action and some situations. The way this is set up has it so that if the story ends with you still in it, you become part of it forever.
We see that this has happened with plenty of kids before. We also get a missing kid aspect with some of the friends which lasts long enough for parents to get worried. Yep, there’s that large scale, like clockwork. All this adds some nice tension. The in universe books themselves aren’t as wild as say, the ones in IM Fine but we get some decently tense situations out of them.
The explanation for all this is pretty crazy and certainly creative. Logic is mostly fair, they explain enough of the rules and the mechanics make enough sense for what they have to do. You can nitpick but it mostly works since it’s simple enough. There’s a good twist, as predictable as it is.. There’s even a clever bait and switch right before lol.
The first half kinda drags it down though. It does get started right away in terms of establishing things but takes its time in terms of building things up. That means it takes a while to have fun with the premise. It’s still good enough early on but feels like it’s just biding time. Stanley’s writing feels more basic this time, with few character descriptions. It works in terms of the action but there could be a better sense of what someone looks like.
Charlie is a decent enough protagonist but there’s not much to anyone else. Once it gets going, everyone blends it. Their love of horror feels less important as it goes on and Charlie loving horror pranks is just dropped. There’s no commentary on kids horror here per say, but I did note that one of them hopes the books are scary and “kids stuff” like “the one with the green slime
“. Hmmm…
Gunkle is a fair villain even if we don’t get much of her. Her ties to what is going on is still a bit unclear though and we don’t get much of defeat despite a decent enough climax. There are little things holding this back early on, as it is a bit dainty to start. But once it gets going, it’s pretty fun with enough tension in these situations.
There’s certainly more it could have done with this premise so it’s not as good as I hoped. It’s more of a modest recommendation compared to others I have read but it had enough to be a fun time. Again, that latter half goes into overdrive to make up for things lol. Not my favorite but still good for the most part.
Next time, we get some Shivers with one that I am kinda interested in, if not to a crazy extent. See ya then.
Subtle. Perhaps the most blatant nod of its type we’ve seen in these. The ghostwriter today is George Edward Stanley, who keeps popping up lol. I like his larger scale stories so let’s see how this measures up.
Charlie and his friends love horror books. Their librarian doesn’t though, so they are banned. The kids from a horror book club but one day the librarian is out sick. In her place is a sub named Mrs Gunkel (not the winner of the funkle bunkle) who allows horror books and even starts a horror book club of her own, which the kids are invited to. She brings a horror collection of her own.
However, when Charlie starts reading, he finds himself literally sucked into the story. He gets himself out but the others are more hit or miss and now they must free them and figure out what Gunkle’s whole deal is.
I heard some good things about this one and while I did like it, it was a bit a let down compared to what I expected. I will say the latter half makes up for most of it. Once it really gets into it, it’s pretty fun. The back half is non-stop action and some situations. The way this is set up has it so that if the story ends with you still in it, you become part of it forever.
We see that this has happened with plenty of kids before. We also get a missing kid aspect with some of the friends which lasts long enough for parents to get worried. Yep, there’s that large scale, like clockwork. All this adds some nice tension. The in universe books themselves aren’t as wild as say, the ones in IM Fine but we get some decently tense situations out of them.
The explanation for all this is pretty crazy and certainly creative. Logic is mostly fair, they explain enough of the rules and the mechanics make enough sense for what they have to do. You can nitpick but it mostly works since it’s simple enough. There’s a good twist, as predictable as it is.. There’s even a clever bait and switch right before lol.
The first half kinda drags it down though. It does get started right away in terms of establishing things but takes its time in terms of building things up. That means it takes a while to have fun with the premise. It’s still good enough early on but feels like it’s just biding time. Stanley’s writing feels more basic this time, with few character descriptions. It works in terms of the action but there could be a better sense of what someone looks like.
Charlie is a decent enough protagonist but there’s not much to anyone else. Once it gets going, everyone blends it. Their love of horror feels less important as it goes on and Charlie loving horror pranks is just dropped. There’s no commentary on kids horror here per say, but I did note that one of them hopes the books are scary and “kids stuff” like “the one with the green slime
“. Hmmm…
Gunkle is a fair villain even if we don’t get much of her. Her ties to what is going on is still a bit unclear though and we don’t get much of defeat despite a decent enough climax. There are little things holding this back early on, as it is a bit dainty to start. But once it gets going, it’s pretty fun with enough tension in these situations.
There’s certainly more it could have done with this premise so it’s not as good as I hoped. It’s more of a modest recommendation compared to others I have read but it had enough to be a fun time. Again, that latter half goes into overdrive to make up for things lol. Not my favorite but still good for the most part.
Next time, we get some Shivers with one that I am kinda interested in, if not to a crazy extent. See ya then.
March 19, 2018
This one was really fun! The main character gets sucked into various horror books and has to save other kids from summer camp werewolves, tropical zombies, and a vampire football team. If a reader makes it to the end of the book without escaping, they become part of the story forever! It manages to build a lot of suspense, though the explanation for the plot doesn't really make a lot of sense It was fun how they make several references to Goosebumps, even on the cover. Definitely one of the better books of the series, with some real stakes.
September 12, 2007
haha. man i remember loving this when i was young.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews