This first book of the series is moderately suspenseful and creepy, but it’s also not all that memorable. The kids discover that all their new friends have gravestones in the town cemetery, and Dark Falls is actually a city of ghosts that needs to sacrifice the entire Benson family in order to survive! Right away they start making friends with some of the kids in their new town, but they soon find that things seem a bit off in Dark Falls. Amanda and Josh are our protagonists, two siblings who are 11 and 12 years old (the standard age for all Goosebumps protagonists). The Benson family finds out that they have inherited a house from a forgotten relative, so they move to the small town of Dark Falls to start over. Welcome to Dead House is where the Goosebumps phenomenon started, and it is a very standard example of what one will get with this series. Title: Goosebumps #1: Welcome to Dead House I can definitely understand why kids devoured stacks of these books as they are often ridiculous, but scary stories that capitalise on the worst fears of children. I have given most of them low-star ratings, but I have been enjoying my re-read even though they have numerous literary problems. Make no mistake, they are entertaining, but this is often despite their poor construction and writing. Thus, Goosebumps are a perfectly legitimate part of a kid’s reading diet, but they don’t tend to warrant all that many stars. I also read books like A Wrinkle in Time and The Phantom Tollbooth, so the presence of Goosebumps didn’t discourage or prevent me from reading novels with a bit more substance. As a child, I loved challenging myself to see how many Goosebumps I could read in a day because even then I took them to be short tales whose sole purpose was to keep me amused for an afternoon. I have no problem with books that are really just about entertainment and silliness as long as there are also books for kids that do offer a more insightful reading experience.
However, this absence of a philosophical underpinning is perfectly fine. Goosebumps is a series for entertaining and scaring kids, not necessarily expanding their horizons, or making them think about deep questions of life. They are not particularly well-written, but neither are they really meant to be pieces of great literature. The books often end with a silly, but creepy twist that makes the reader rethink the story, or entraps the characters in a bigger or more long-lasting problem than expected. There are usually at least two protagonists in each book, and at least one boy and one girl. While the children are often threatened, there is never much violence in these books, and the kids usually escape their enemies (though sometimes they are changed in odd and unnerving ways). There are 62 books in the series, and most feature 12 year old protagonists who are confronted with strange, paranormal events. Stine, were introductory horror novels for children of my generation.
#Unwritten novel sherlock holmes tv#
Since I had a particular love for horror novels and TV shows as a child, I decided to start with Goosebumps!
I was also curious to see how they stood up to the test of time and maturity. From things like Nancy Drew to Animorphs, there were a lot of stories that I read as a kid that were fun and short and might provide some entertainment even to me now.
I was searching through books from my childhood on GoodReads when I had the whim to reread some of the old series that I used to enjoy.
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