The Substitute Creature

Spinetinglers #1

by M.T. Coffin (Pseudonym ), Kathleen Duey

When nobody believes Jace's claims that she saw the new substitute teacher smearing blood all over his hands and face, Jace spies on the mysterious Mr. Hiss and concludes that the creepy substitute is not a human being.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Childrens

124 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1995

Reviews

[Josiah · Rating 1 out of 5]

"M.T. Coffin" is the pseudonym used for all thirty Spinetinglers books. Unlike most Goosebumps read-alike series from the 1990s that used a pseudonym, however, the author of each book is credited by their real name on the copyright page. In the case of The Substitute Creature, that's Kathleen Duey, whose books for young readers ranged from movie novelizations to fantasy series to award-winning YA fiction. When Jace Morgan finds out his class at school will have a substitute teacher indefinitely, it doesn't seem so bad. He likes his usual teacher, Mrs. Dement, but maybe the substitute will give him a break from major projects. Mr. Hiss is an odd fellow; the way his eyes shift from student to student, staring at each of them a little too long, can be disconcerting. So are his long silences, interrupted by bursts of loud speech. Jace's best friend, Abram Saeb, likes Mr. Hiss's innovative approach to education, and Jace would like him too if there weren't something...not quite right about the man. Jace just can't put his finger on what it is.

Jace first realizes Mr. Hiss may be dangerous when he spots him in a back room at school, covered in blood, but when he sees the teacher a short while later he looks normal. Was what Jace saw a trick of the light? Over the next several days, every time Jace is ready to believe his imagination got the better of him, he witnesses a new horrifying scene involving Mr. Hiss, one that only Jace ever sees. He doesn't tell his parents, or even Abram. Who would believe he saw the teacher's eyes glowing red, or that he watched him eat a bowl of eyeballs? The stress of keeping this secret weighs on Jace, causing him to withdraw in class and family life. His parents are worried and so is Abram, but how can Jace convince them Mr. Hiss is a monster? He needs proof, and the only way to get it is to spy on Mr. Hiss where he lives. But if the teacher catches him, will Jace survive to see another day at school?

The Substitute Creature has crisper, more detailed writing than most series that tried to emulate R.L. Stine's Goosebumps. The characters are also fleshed out better. I would give it at least two stars if not for the ending; the revelation of what's going on with Mr. Hiss feels hollow and seems to lack logical consistency. The Substitute Creature isn't a bad tone-setter for the series, though. I rate the book one and a half stars, and Spinetinglers could be an entertaining option for kids who want something like Goosebumps, but a little different. I'll be back for book two, Billy Baker's Dog Won't Stay Buried by George Edward Stanley.

[Austin Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

So slow and boring, and a terrible twist ending that essentially makes the plot ineffectual.
It's been done, and done better. Read The Girl Who Cried Monster from Goosebumps.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright, time for another Spinetinglers. This time the randomizer took me back to the start, all the way to the first entry in March 1995. I don't know if I mentioned before on here but the first Strange Matter book came out the same month as this. That was No Substitutions, about an evil substitute teacher. As you can tell from the title, this is also about a possibly evil sbustitude.

That's right, two Goosebumps-type series come out the same month, and the first book is about the exact same topic. Now that's creepy. The first books in these tend to be weakest and while that applied to Strange Matter, it was stlll good. How does this fare? Eh, it's mixed. Lesser than that one for sure though.

Our ghostwriter, the first one for the series, is Kathleen Duey who also did Wear and Scare which I covered. I talked about her there and her writing is kinda similar but we'll touch on that after we go over the plot.

Jace Morgan's nice teacher is replaced for a while by a sub named Mr. Hiss. He seems a bit off putting at first, looking a tad odd, but he's actually a good teacher, making subjects like history somewhat interesting. Everyone likes him fine but soon Jace sees him do odd things. Such as wiping his face with blood in the bathroom and such. Yeah, a bit weird. He has to figure out what kind of creature this guy really is.

First, his name is Hiss and yet spoilers, it doesn't even hint at him being a snake. He's no Blankenship or Snakol from the Spooksville one. Weird. Anyway, Katlheen's strengths and weaknesses are pretty clear with this one.

The highlights come in the little things. The writing itself isn't the strongest all the time, the short sentences can be a a tad clunky. But there's good mood setting later on, and she fits in some small character moments. They aren't especially fleshed out but there are little bits that make them feel just a bit more real at times.

The parents are once again pretty cool, infact mom is an actress just like the one in Wear and Scare. She's no Aunt Emma but the parents are pretty nice and understanding when Jace is clearly troubled. Spinetinglers may have the best parents of all these series, easily. The acting thing even gets paid off.

The pacing is generally fine as it gets started quickly enough. So there's these little things that work to make it fine. But it's better at that than big picture stuff, which was also true of Wear and Scare. It's more clear cut and logical this time, kind of. It's pretty basic which is kind of a problem. I've seen this premise a lot, from Girl who Cried Monster to My Teacher is an Alien and it doesn't really add much new.

The blood is cool but that's it for scares, really. I like how Jace and his friend Abram generally keep things to themselves as they look into this, as that means less of the "you gotta believe me" stuff. But there isn't a ton as far as suspense goes.

It jumps into things a bit too quickly as we don't get to know Jace that well before we get into it. We learn more as we go and he's a fine protagonist, just not super standout. I think there's enough, it just seems to rush into things. Which is odd as, like in Wear and Scare, certain events take forever to happen. There's some word count padding, is what I'm saying.

But in general there's enough to decent enough, but then there's the ending. The "twist" is pretty lame, it's very deflating and feels more like Spinechillers than Spinetinglers. Yeah. It's odd and feels like they were trying something out for the first entry and then dropped it.

It doesn't make much sense and just feels like a weak twist. It can work in some series, but not this one. I like the final note at least but we could have had a more drawn out epilogue. This ending will break the whole thing for most.

For me...eh? It's perfectly fine before then, even with the flaws it keeps going well enough and has these little things we don't usually see in these. I can tell Kathleen is better at these little character building bits than the actual story. I assume this was early in her career and she got better as she went into her other work. I wanna read some of that as she has potential, just may not fit for a horror series.

Overall, this has growing pains but it's not a bad little read for what it is. It has it's good points, just not enough to be especially good. It's textbook Decent, and the weakest in the series so far. It's weird this series is somewhat of a favorite due to the stronger entries but now has 2 Decent ones going for it. Even these 2 has strengths you don't always find in these so there's that.

Still, it's just the first and the series got far more out there after that, including the very next one, which was Billy Baker. This one's fine but read that first, for sure. We'll see how Kathleen does in others but for now, this was just...fine. Get a new twist and we'll talk.

Well, not sure when I'll get to it but yeah, see ya sometime for Galaxy of Fear to close the cycle off. I also have the next Pike soon as man it's gonna be March this week, damn. See ya all then.

[Samantha Osborne · Rating 4 out of 5]

a really interesting read almost reminds me of goosebumps plus deadtime books i liked it.

[Colton · Rating 2 out of 5]

For the first book in this series, it was all right, but nothing really special. The idea of a creepy teacher had been done before several times in Goosebumps, and it's clear that Spinetinglers was trying to break out of the shadow of that popular series while taking inspiration from it. The pacing was really strange, as there are large chunks of this book where nothing happens. Jace is just running around and sees the substitute doing weird things, until the ending, which wraps everything up too neatly and in a boring way. As the series, continued, the stories would begin to get weirder and darker, more willing to take risks, and more interesting.

[Alejandro Joseph · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn’t resist reading another ‘Tingler this month, and to be blunt, I really wanted to get this one out of the way. It’s the series pilot, it has a semi-rough reputation amongst my favored reviewers, and seems like a typical teacher’s a monster story. And… yeah, it was as rough as I expected. For some slight upsides, the writing it pretty solid, there’s some light character building that I liked (nothing crazy but more than usual in these books), and there’s some standout scenes in here that were quite gross, though not so much after the twist. Plus, the book isn’t exactly the most offensive thing from this series; nothing about this one story-wise was actually terrible, but there’s rough stuff (need I repeat?). My biggest issue here is the abhorrent speed of the story: it is slow, to an extent that is polarizing. I’m not the fasted reader but I never have much trouble with these or much of what I read, but here, it really tested my patience. The story itself doesn’t work with how slow its pace is. The plot merits a speed around, for example, 30mph. The actual speed we’re going? 5mph at most. It’s just not cutting it for what we’re getting here and comes off as an almost bore/snooze-fest. Alongside the shit pacing, the ending is light diarrhea. Conceptually, an ending like this would not only be refreshing, but it would really work for a story like this—at a glance. See, the ending makes sense enough, and I’m not bothered by its logic or it’s delivery—I’m bothered that it’s what this slow-burn borefest was leading up to. The ending far more favors a short story or a different kind of build-up in general. With how slow this book is and the lack of payoff we’re getting for most of it, you’d expect the ending to absolutely deliver, yet for me it was wholly unsatisfactory. It didn’t fit the journey and almost made me feel like I’ve wasted my time. It’s not a bad ending, just not the one I think anyone was reading this for. And to top it off briefly, the story lacks epic and meat in favor of filler and drug-out scenes. It comes with pacing/speed but is notably annoying in itself. Overall, 4/10. Not a bad story conceptually but wholly screwed with the pace and ending; it would’ve favored a shorter page count, and possibly a different ending if the same disappointment were to occur. The Creatitute Substure.

[Jason Harlow · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the first installment of the Spinetingler series, our protagonists Jace and Abram (both young males) are suspicious of their substitute teacher Mr. Hiss, after hearing he eats eyeballs from their classmate Molly. They begin to spy on him and attempt to track him down outside of school, and soon enough they find out Mr. Hiss is as creepy as believed. This story (just like Simon Says Croak from the same series) seemed to be filled with too much filler and simply not enough reasons to make the audience want to keep reading. The ending pretty much made the entire story a complete waste of time. I plan on finishing The Monster Channel, which is said to be a pretty good book, and if that isn't my cup of tea, I'll be taking a break from the "MT Coffin"/Spinetingler books altogether. There was definitely a decent attempt at suspense here, but there are better ways to rip off The Girl Who Cried Monster than this. This wasn't great at all.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story has a lot of good elements:
- likeable characters
- suspense, complete with chapters ending with cliffhangers
- ending that resolves the mystery

It just seemed things were missing from the book. It’s as if the author was used to writing short television shows where the images don’t necessarily need to be explained.

[Becky · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not bad 👍🏻

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't expect this book to be as good as it was considering I am older than the target audience, but I did enjoy it. I enjoyed the character of Mr. Hiss and the adventures Jace and his friend Abram went on when they suspected their substitute teacher was in fact a creature!

[Jamya Ford]

i did a project on this book and got first place