All-Day Nightmare

Give Yourself Goosebumps #42

by R.L. Stine

The reader wakes up with no memories in an spooky old house and must decide how to get out and reach safety

Genres: Horror, Middle Grade, Gamebooks, Choose Your Own Adventure, Fiction, Childrens

137 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2000

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

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I died rather quickly...

[fanboyriot · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was good but it also felt really random with the paths to the point some didn’t make sense.

[Alejandro Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over the years, I’ve heard many mixed things about this book. And after finally reading it, I’m mixed on it too. The werewolf storyline is easily one of the best in all of Give Yourself Goosebumps. It’s creepy and fun, with some solid endings and ideas thrown into the mix. There’s also just generally a lot of creative goodness in here, which I love. And there’s some solid endings and even one of the scariest things I could imagine, which is waking up in a strange place remembering nothing. Real good stuff there. However, the book shits the bed with the other storylines. The storyline involving aliens is super basic and has little to offer that’s engaging or entertaining. It’s just the most by-the-numbers alien crap. No sir, that ain’t good. And the agent storyline… yeah, hard pass. It rivals the arctic storyline in Zapped in Space for least entertaining and most uninteresting segment in the whole series (not franchise, just this run of books). There’s like two things that were kinda cool and the rest is just nonsense. Heck nah. And to wrap up downsides, there’s a couple horrible endings, some of them coming from the werewolf storyline sadly enough. 7.5/10, I’d recommend this one souly for the werewolf storyline. Cool concepts in here tbf.

[Willen P · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this book was okay.

The title was quite misleading though. I expected it to be more about the nightmares (similar to "It's Only A Nightmare"), but it was more to do with a storyline about being a werewolf, a secret agent or meeting aliens. A more suitable title would be something like "Severe Memory Loss" (thought that probably sounds more like a non-fiction title).

Each arc of the story was okay. It was quite exciting to be a werewolf (or were-hawk in one storyline) and either trying to get cured for it, or infect others. (the other wolves call you "Master" so I'm assuming I'm male). Meeting the aliens was also okay, although nothing too exciting happened.

There was an instance of an option page leading to nowhere -or rather to a different storyline. That was a huge glitch - you don't get to explore the house but get branched off into the other storyline.

So this one was a bit disappointing as the finale of the series (though originally it wasn't meant to be the last one).

[Chris Hay · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's three plotlines: werewolves, secret agents, or aliens. Werewolves is obviously the best one, and is the real reason anyone would read this (that cover art is incredible!). There's a lot of fun scenarios and endings in the werewolf one. The werewolf-hunter doll things are also really creepy, and I remember that bit even from when I was a kid. Between werewolves and being secret agents, both have a really fun aspect that you and your friend actually are really powerful and important but don't know it at first.

The secret agent line with the "matter slammer" is just "OK", not as interesting, fun, or scary as the werewolf line. I didn't read all of the alien line, but I found it a bit more interesting and creepy than the secret agent one. I think the alien story is pretty tricky to get to, easy to miss. Between all three stories, it's a fun concept how the author took some abstract visuals (e.g. circle of fire) and managed to make something of it for all three stories. Although the "nightmare" aspect was a bit loose (moreso about having no memory when you wake up), I appreciated that the story tried to tie it in more often than just the initiating event.

Random aside: I'm pretty sure I found a mistake... page 40 gives an option to go to page 129 to search the house, but that's a page in the middle of some alien plotline drama. I believe it should have been page 137 instead of 129.

Personal note: I used to own this when I was a kid, but donated my copy when I was a teen. Now an adult, I regret giving away half my books, and was dismayed to discover this is one of the more rare and expensive ones! Still managed to get a good condition copy off ebay, but it was a bit pricey!

My favorite werewolf endings (spoilers) are when you turn the hunters and you all have a werewolf party basically, haha. And second place probably when you wake up as a plain old wolf in a cave, and you're glad you don't need to worry about werewolf issues. Silly and kind of cute.

[Maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dieses Buch war eins der besseren seiner Art, die ich bisher gelesen habe. Hauptsächlich, weil ich beim Lesen tatsächlich teilweise das Gefühl hatte, dass man mit logischem Denken weiterkommt bzw. es in den einzelnen Abschnitten tatsächlich Hinweise auf Dinge gab, und nicht alles kompletter Zufall war. Und es war auch interessant, so unterschiedliche Geschichten-Entwicklungen, auch mit komplett unterschiedlichen Themen zu haben, damit habe ich beim Lesen nicht gerechnet.
Ich fand es allerdings sehr anstrengend, immer zu “Abschnitt x” geschickt zu werden, statt “Seite x” irgendwie hat das das Lesen für mich um einiges anstrengender gemacht, und die Tatsache, wie oft etwas mit “nur ein Traum” anfing oder erklärt wurde ist mir ziemlich auf die Nerven gegangen. So wörtlich hätte man den Titel meiner Meinung nach wirklich nicht nehmen müssen. Genauso wenig hätte der Lesende in einem Abschnitt als Junge bezeichnet werden müssen. 136 der Abschnitte kommen aus, ohne dem Lesenden ein Geschlecht zuzuordnen, also warum muss es dann in diesem einen sein? Es kam mir einfach unnötig vor, besonders, da ich mir nicht vorstellen kann, dass ausschließlich Jungen das Buch lesen.
Insgesamt waren es vermutlich eher Kleinigkeiten, die mich gestört haben (teilweise war zum Beispiel auch das Layout nicht einheitlich), aber es waren leider genug, dass mein Spaß beim Lesen doch sehr darunter gelitten hat.

[Jojo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Handlung
[Klappentext]

„Mit einem Schrei erwachst du. Du bist schweißgebadet. Das war wirklich ein grauenvoller Albtraum. Erleichtert willst du dich in dein warmes Bett kuscheln, aber du liegst gar nicht in deinem Bett, sondern auf dem Boden. Erstaunt siehst du dich in dem dunklen Zimmer um. Nichts kommt dir bekannt vor. Wo bist du? Wie bist du hierhergekommen? Du kannst dich an nichts mehr erinnern - nicht mal an deinen eigenen Namen. Plötzlich taucht ein Junge auf. Auch er weiß nicht, wer er ist. Gemeinsam Brecht ihr auf, um mehr über euch herauszufinden. Schaurige Abenteuer stehen euch bevor...“


Fazit

Der Aufbau als ein "Abenteuer-Spiel-Buch" ist definitiv eine gelungene Abwechslung und wird dadurch interessant. Mir gefällt sehr, dass man selbst entscheiden kann wie die Handlung verläuft und wie die Geschichte darauffolgend endet. So kann man das Buch mehrmals lesen und die Handlung ändern. Auch die Grundidee der Handlung sehr gut umgesetzt. Der Schreibstil bekommt gerade durch den Aufbau eine gewisse extra Spannung und man kommt super in die Handlung rein.

Es ist auf alle Fälle ein guter Tipp, um Kindern mit Spaß zum Lesen zu bringen.

[Griffin C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the final GYG book and I think overall, this was a pretty good note to end on. The werewolf storyline was incredible, the Matter Slammer storyline was fine, and the alien storyline was pretty bad. 8.5/10

[Arunothia Marappan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such books are very interesting because you get to choose your own doom :p I ended up as a were-skunk xD

[Colton · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a great eerie premise - stuck in a strange house battling against aliens and werewolves. What more can you ask from R.L. Stine? However, I really don't recall having much interest while I was reading, regarding most of the plot twists with a shrug and a yawn. I do recall one plotline involving werewolf hunters and you can either join the group or turn into a werewolf and hunt the hunters, which was pretty cool. It's a decent read, but nothing too spectacular, a statement which applies to a lot of the later entries in this series.

[Arrica Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book although it is not the best book from RL Stine.