Goosebumps Collection 9

by R.L. Stine

Includes:
- Ghost Beach
- Phantom of the Auditorium
- It Came From Beneath The Sink!

Genres: Horror

366 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Robert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series.

R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold.

Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY.

http://us.macmillan.com/itsthefirstda...

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never having read a Goosebumps book before, when I saw this copy - which collects three of them in one volume - in a secondhand bookshop, I bought it to see what the Goosebumps experience was like. Previously, I'd thought the Goosebumps books were aimed at teens but it's clear from reading this book that they are meant primarily for tweens. After checking out Stine's entry on Wikipedia, I learned that it's his Fear Street books that are intended for a teen audience. Still, I was curious to see what made Stine's books so popular as he'd sold more than 400 million books worldwide by 2008!

The first book in the collection, Ghost Beach, involves a boy and his sister staying with elderly cousins during the summer. A cave on the nearby beach is said to be haunted, local children shunning it, and a mysterious light or glow can be seen emanating from it at night time. Is it really haunted and are the children in danger from its ghost?

The second book, The Phantom of the Auditorium (obviously inspired by The Phantom of the Opera!), is set in a middle school where the protagonist and her best friend (a boy) are given the leading roles in a school play, which is to be performed about 70 years after its previous performance ended in a tragedy. And now, someone or something, is doing everything it can to stop it from running!

The third book, It Came from Beneath the Sink!, involves a strange organism resembling an old sponge which a girl and her brother find on the day that they and their parents move into a new house. They soon wish they hadn't found it!

Although lacking the scare factor of an adult horror novel, this volume offers some creepy moments, cliffhanger chapter endings and nice narrative twists that will satisfy many younger readers. Although there was just a hint of gore in one story, there were some serious - potentially deadly - threats to the protagonists in these tales which made them scarier than, say, a Scooby Doo episode (and with genuine supernatural elements too!). The stories also feature many traditionally creepy, unpleasant or dangerous places - graveyards, caves, basements, tunnels and, of course, the cupboard beneath a certain kitchen sink!

The three books follow certain formulae: they are all written in the first person, the protagonist is always 12 or very nearly 12 and has an important, opposite-gender sidekick (a best friend of sibling). Not only do the children have to deal with ghosts and other nefarious beings, they have to contend with disbelieving or disinterested adults so that they always have to try to solve the hauntings and other problems themselves. Usually this works well but the lack of a reaction from a gardening parent when a garden mysteriously dies as if from a drought the day after a heavy rain was a strange omission. The stories are well-paced and lightened with the banter, pranks and teasing that commonly occurs between young friends and/or their siblings. There was some humorous introspection too. I laughed when I read this passage (on p. 41) about the protagonist's sister examining a starfish as his response was exactly what I was thinking:

She turned it over. Its legs wriggled. 'Hello, cute little sea star,' she sang. Yuck.

I also liked (on p. 45):

Agatha made a really great old-fashioned chicken pot pie for dinner. I ate all of mine except for the peas and carrots. I'm not into vegetables.

As Stine is an American writer, the stories are set in the United States, but the text of this edition has been largely localised for British readers (with words like 'mum' for 'mom', 'torch' for 'flashlight', 'trainers' for 'sneakers') although some American phrases (like 'station wagon') remain.

Overall, I liked The Phantom of the Auditorium the most but, despite being aimed at younger readers, I enjoyed all three stories (even if the endings weren't entirely unpredictable). I'm sure my nephews will enjoy this and other books in the Goosebumps series when they are old enough to read them.

[Shruti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really SCARY