#29 Monster Blood III

Judging a Book by its Cover

More Monster Blood. When will these kids learn that messing with Monster Blood never works out well for
them. Now in the previous books a dog and a hamster consumed the slime and grew huge. From the looks of things, this time one of the kids eats it and it's attack of the 50 foot fifth grader. I notice you can only see his legs, which is a pretty good tactic. Makes him look unknowably huge. It makes me think of the nanny from The Muppet Babies. Something mysterious about not seeing the top half of a person.

Now this giant kid appears to be rampaging on an empty playground. It would kind of be more fun if we could see normal sized kids reactions to this giant. Or perhaps a stuffy upset adult mad at the crushing of the swing set. On the ground appears to be a can of Monster Blood... or some Slurm from Futurama. Also, stylishly, the kid seems to be wearing some Converse All-Stars.  If he becomes an outcast, surely it will be due to his size and not his fashion sense.

Tagline time! The front line is "Evan's growing up way too fast!" which is clever enough. It is turned from a phrase your aunt says when she sees you at Christmas to a declaration that you can now crush Dodge Caravan under your feet. The bag tagline is "It's the slime that never dies!" I don't really get that. Does slime die? Is the slime alive? It never seemed to be suggested that it was. Is "the _____ that never dies," a saying I am unaware of? Oh well. 1 out of 2 at bad. Lets get Goosebumps.

Getting Goosebumps

We open up in a daydream of Evan Ross getting attacked by slimy green balls of Monster Blood. He recalls his past confrontations with it, where it caused his pets to grow huge in size. His mother snaps him out of the daydream and back into the real world where he is not being attacked by ooze but is instead merely eating green Jell-o. He seems not to be a fan, due to its tendency to remind him of the horrible ooze of his nightmares. Well it seems in this book we will be treated to a new character. Evan has to babysit for 8 year old nephew Kermit who doesn't just have a geeky name, but is a genuine geek. He, it seems, is a total genius who has a tendency to make concoctions that are a wee bit devious. Evan has to put up with it, however, because that sweet sweet 3 dollars an hour will help him save up for a Walkman, which is a very 90s thing to save up for.

On his way to the little dork's house, Evan is confronted by stereotypical bully with stereotypical bully name Conan. Hassling him over nothing of any importance, Kermit appears with a liquid mixture that he purports will cause Conan to disappear. Instead it just makes his sure disappear... which makes Evan's nose get a wee bit broken by Conan. Later Evan talks these events over with Andy at a school. Now if you remember from the previous books, Andy is in fact a female, and she has a love of day-glo clothes, which is also a very 90s thing. Evan explains how Kermit claimed that Evan had picked the fight with Conan, Evan's baby sitter credentials to be questioned. Also, Evan claims Kermit did all this deliberately.  The evidence, he says, is in the kid's shit eating grin. Ok, maybe he didn't call it a shit eating grin, but I can read between the lines. Andy recommends retribution via Monster Blood which causes Evan to panic. Her claims that she also put some Monster Blood in his sandwich make panic even more. Thankfully it is too early in the book for actual Monster Blood to come into play. After he realizes this, he taunts her with her true name, Andrea, and makes her tell him where she has hidden the last "gift" of the titular ooze she was sent. Finally, he convinces her to come over to Kermit's with him. Supposedly he is not as bad when she's around. I find this doubtful!

Kermit's house smelled a little weird. The the kid comes bursting out screaming "It's gonna blow!" and Evan scrambled for his life. Andy, however, realizes it is a joke. Kermit cackles deviously. Evan beats him to death. Wait no, that last part is just what I wish happened. He actually tries to play it off like he didn't really believe the room was going to explode. Smooth. Next up, Kermit curse Andy's nasty mosquito bite with that shrinking serum he used on Conan's shirt, and it actually works with no ill effects. He decides that for his next project he is going to cure his dogs hiccups. Evan seems worried that if Kermit kills the dog the blame will be placed on the babysitter. Sensible. Andy, however, has been won over by his bug bite cure and thinks he should do it. Apparently that whole thing about pretending the house was going to explode is water under the bridge. She might have an ulterior motive though, she gets the nerd to do her math homework. Then he moves on to the hiccup cure. It does in fact cure the hiccups. It also causes the dog to bound around crazily yipping like a puppy. The problem is, it is not a puppy, it is a very large dog. It smashes up all kind of stuff, and naturally, Evan gets blamed. Even Kermit's fan Andy gets thrown under the bus and has to help clean up. She beats him to death instead. Wait no, once again I'm just saying what I wish would happen.

Anyway, after Andy finds out the "help" he gave her on her homework was all wrong, she convinces Evan it's time to break out the Monster Blood. What they plan to do with a slime that makes thing giant though, I really don't know. They gonna have a giant 8 year old pain in the ass on their hands? Evan almost immediately wusses out and backtracks on their plans. He realizes that a giant Kermit is a bad plan. Andy seems to think slipping the junk into one of the mixtures Kermit makes will have a cool result though. Sounds like she hasn't exactly thought this one through. Well, they call off the Monster Blood plans and go to Kermit's. They convince him to come outside and play for once, but first he gives them some delicious orange soda. Outside they start laughing uncontrollably. He drugged the pop with a laughing potion! And then, laughing endlessly, they beat him to death. Argh, man, I really gotta stop just typing my desires. Naturally, it's at this time that Conan comes out and doesn't take kindly to their fits of laughing. So in typical bully fashion, he beats em up, egged on of course by Kermit.

Finally, pushed to their limits, they decide to unleash Monster Blood. Evan distracted the dweeb with a candy bar while Andy planted the Monster Blood in his latest concoction. It works and the mixture starts growing in size! Kermit gets noticeably worried. Unfortunately, so do the too other kids when it starts engulfing them. POP it explodes. Their plan fails when Kermit in fact is totally delighted by the explosion. It fails again when Evan realizes he accidentally swallowed some and is now growing. First thing I would do as a giant? Stomp on Kermit. That little schmuck thinks it would be cool to grow giant like his cousin. Quickly he begins outgrowing the room and realizes he has to get out of the house before he bursts out of it! Struggling, he makes it. Outside, he notices that he is nearly as tall as the garage. Andy keeps making back jokes, and mad scientist Kermit thinks it is pretty much the coolest thing ever. Seriously, when is this little shit going to get stomped on?

Then Evan notices Conan picking on some kids. Now that even towers over the bully it is his turn to exact revenge. Ever the prick, Conan still picks on Evan even though he's huge, the doofus promptly gets placed into the branches of a rather tall tree. Personally I would have flung him like a rag doll through the air, but to each their own. Having fun with his new found size, he starts heading toward the playground, accidentally stomping cars and completely neglecting to SMASH KERMIT INTO THE GROUND! He heads to the baseball field where the children eagerly all urge him to play with them instead of running in fucking terror at the sight of human being that is large enough to smash cars with a single foot.

Just when he was starting to have some fun, the fuzz shows up. Cops and firefighters lead by Conan march against giant Evan. They ask him questions, and don't particularly care about the answers before they start blasting him with fire hoses. Apparently this is how you handle giant children. This causes Evan predictably to flee. Since he has long ass legs, he can do a pretty good job of it. Kermit gets the idea to use the potion he mixed to shrink Andy's bug bite to shrink kid ginormo. Unfortunately he doesn't have any left so he has to mix up another batch. Instead of shrinking him, this new mix turns him blue and gives him the hiccups. The next mix gave him feathers so he looked like a giant blue eagle. The last potion works, right as cops roll up and ask if they've seen any giant children around. Whew! All is right with the world again. That night Evan had a nightmare about what had happened. When he woke up his dog Trigger came in and picked him up in his mouth. Evan shrunk! FUCK YOU KERMIT!

What I Thought

I am getting a little sick of having annoying frustrating characters not getting their comeuppance. Doesn't RL Stine know how deeply satisfying it is to have little shits like Kermit get exactly what they deserve? Can't that happen like, once? And sure, though I may have shared my desire to see him pulverized, perhaps a more kid friendly retribution. For example, instead of the silly quick twist at the very end of Evan getting tiny, perhaps a freak lab accident leaves Kermit with a shrunken head? Or a wayward blast of the fire house and a bump on the head lower Kermits IQ by 20 points or such? Would that be so wrong? Maybe schadenfreude isn't the healthy attribute to cultivate in young people, but it's not like these books are filled with morals anyway! Clearly Evan and Andy have not learned their lessons about messing with Monster Blood after all this time. I think there is even Monster Blood IV yet to come (though I don't currently own it, I'll have to keep an eye out a thrift stores.)

So anyway, this was basically the same as the other Monster Bloods. Kids mess with it, it makes a thing big, they panic, and then unbig things. The difference this time was Kermit the annoying and the biggening happening to a kid instead of a pet. This actually was an interesting change for a couple reasons. 1) His fun at being huge and getting some revenge on his bully. 2) His fun quickly turning to terror as he is pursued by the authorities. Honestly though, I think it would have been fun if they mimicked some classic movies. Have him climb a building like King Kong! Let him destroy a little more than a car. Really there was too much them dealing with frustrating Kermit, and not enough rampaging around as a Giant. It seems like there is always too little payoff in these books.

Basically... this book is as mediocre as the rest of the book. It blends in fine. It did something slightly different with the theme of Monster Blood. After 30 books though, it's just nothing special. I can understand why it was about about this time that I started getting burnt out on these books 20ish years ago.

My Rating: 3 out of 5 Giants

 

Up Next

Well #30 in the series is It Came From Beneath the Sink. However, April Fools Day is coming up and I thought that'd be the perfect time to cover the second and final book in the spoof series Gooflumps. I recently found it for a buck at a thrift store and have been looking for an excuse to read it. So check back April 1st for the literary classic Eat Cheese and Barf!

#18 Monster Blood II

Judging a Book by its Cover

Alternate Title: Attack of the Giant Hamster. He's a pretty mean looking bugger. The perspective of the photo makes it look scarier. Like you're looking up at him, because your tiny. Really that would just mean he's on a giant desk though. And the monster blood is oozing off of it. It's one of those rare times when the book borders compliment the book, being that they are pretty much green ooze themselves.

The tagline on the front is "He's one hungry hamster!" That just makes him sound obese, and not enormous in a scary way. "It's baaack...." is the uninspired tagline on the back. Disappointing.

All in all, I only have one thing to say, "Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist!"

Getting Goosebumps

We start out with star of Monster Blood I, Evan and his dog Trigger. It seems Trigger somehow got a hold of monster blood again and is growing ever bigger. He grabs Evan and buries him in the garden. Oh no! Book over! Shortest book yet. Oh wait, he was just day dreaming in class. It seems he hasn't quite gotten over the antics of the first book. No one in Atlanta believes what happened and he's getting in trouble with his science teacher. As punishment he has to clean out the class's pet hamster cage. If that wasn't bad enough he keeps being hassled by school bully Conan "The Barbarian" Barber. The kid is only twelve but apparently looks as though he's 32... which frankly is kind of creepy.

At least everything goes smoothly with cleaning the hamsters cage, right? Wrong. Cuddles the hamster escapes and rather boldly for a hamster, jumps out the window and scurries around the school grounds. Guess who finds him? Evan? No! Conan, and he wants to force Evan to sing to get Cuddles back. What a dick. The science teacher shows up just in time for Conan to make Evan look even worse. Things just aren't going well for this kid. You'd think it was all uphill from his first dealing with monster blood.

Well in a convenient turn of plot, Evan's old tomboy friend Andrea, or "Andy" shows up in Atlanta. Apparently her parents moved somewhere and she is staying there with relatives as long as is necessary for the book. She even brought the old canister of monster blood with her! And, uh-oh, there is still some inside. On top of that, it's growing! While they briefly consider using it to prove Evan isn't crazy, after it nearly turns up in the hands of Conan they decide they need to dispose of it.Burying it is deemed the best method.

Later, Evan goes to tryout for the basketball team. After being slammed in the face in with a basketball, and somehow being dunked in the hoop by a middle schooler Evan fails to make the team. And Mr. Science teacher coach is blamed for letting Conan walk all over Evan. Andy dreams up the idea of using the monster blood to feed to Cuddles the hamster as a way of getting back at Mr. Science Teacher Coach. Evan goes along with it but when they try and dig it up, the monster blood is gone! Conan is the suspected culprit, and to prove it they commit breaking and entering.

Once they retrieve the can of monster blood and narrowly escape being caught by Conan they decide the best course of action is just to bury it again. Or do they? Well it turns out Andy decides Evan "needs a laugh" so she fed Cuddles the hamster some monster blood. By school the next day, Cuddles is the size of a large rabbit. Evan comes in early the morning after to discover that Cuddles got big enough to bust out of its cage. He puts a conveniently placed dog leash on it, and cuts class. The teacher however, thinks it's pretty rad to have a giant hamster... that is until the next day...

Yes, Cuddles is like 10 feet tall the day after. It is raising all sorts of hell, with the teacher trying to tame him like a lion and having no success. There is only one solution: Evan has to eat some of the monster blood to combat it. He eats enough so he starts growing immediately. When he himself is 10 feet tall he tries to confront the beast, but as he is still outweighed the hamster dominates him. Evan stops growing and can't figure out why. Just as the hamster is about to sink its teeth into him, POOF everything is back to normal. What the hell? Well, it turns out that can of monster blood has an expiration date, and its today. CONVENIENT!

In the end, Conan made to look like a fool because he was crying for mommy when confronted by Cuddles. Evan was made to look like a hero since he bravely ate the repulsive goo. As a reward, he received the now normal sized Cuddles. Andy, the loyal side kick, got a package in the mail from her parents. Guess what it is? More monster blood! Oh man. Hey, where is Cuddles? HEY! WHAT IS CUDDLES EATING?

The end.

What I Thought of it

Hamsters! Not what I'd call a scary monster. Even a big one doesn't seem particularly scary to me. Maybe if it was Godzilla sized. That might have been cooler. Still, I guess it is something familiar to kids and the idea of one getting huge and terrorizing the school is pretty fun. Sadly however, it's reign of terror is short. In Stine's books there is a decent amount of buildup but then everything gets solved in a couple really short chapters. Sometimes I think if he just lengthened the books by about 50% they would improve about 100%. And it's not like kids couldn't read just a little bit more.

Anyway. Sequel. I believe this is the first direct sequel to a previous book. Truth be told, I already forgot about a bit of the previous Monster Blood. Andy I like as a character. She is a bit memorable as far as Goosebumps characters go. Evan is as generic a protagonist as they come. He doesn't grow as a character any, but I suppose that isn't what these books are about. They are about having fun with kind of freaky events. This book is more fun than freaky. But as its aimed at 10 year olds, that's probably ok.

Now, about the ending. 9 times out of 10 the overly silly stupid Stine ending bugs the crap out of me. This one I kind of liked. Sure it being the expiration date was kind of a lame gag... but it was lame enough to make me chuckle. The notion that this sci-fi, magic, poweful mystic goo has an expiration date? Classic! I'll allow it.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Conans

Up Next

Next up in the series is Deep Trouble which I believe is part Jaws, part Creature From the Black Lagoon, and Part Splash. However, the next book I read is gonna be a special surprise. Check back in a couple weeks for that.

#3 Monster Blood

Today I'll be revisiting Goosebumps Book 3, Monster Blood. I remember this being one of the more popular entries in the series, and wouldn't be at all surprised if it was his best selling book. There were 3 direct sequels to this book in the original series alone and I am willing to bet he revisited it in at least one of his newer series.

What do I remember about this book? Well, I believe that this kid goes to an odd shop and buys this mysterious stuff called Monster Blood, and despite the salesman's warning he feeds it after midnight and it turns into a Gremlin... No wait, that was something else. I am pretty sure he does buy monster blood from a weird store though, and I am not sure whether or not the salesman warned him about it or not, but I believe the stuff starts growing like crazy and I think an animal eats it and gets big... or maybe that was one of the sequels?

One memory of this book, is the Spanish version of it. In my elementary school we had a weekly Spanish class, and in 5th or 6th grade the teacher had a copy of Monster Blood in Spanish that she would loan out to people. Unfortunately all I had learned in her class was how to say, "Hello, my name Juan. How are you?", as well as a bunch of fruits and vegetables, number, and colors. Since it was Monster Blood and not "How are 6 Green Apples Named Juan," I was at loss for reading it and I am pretty sure everyone else was too. It was interesting that the books had achieved the level of popularity to be translated though. Anyway, enough with the memories, lets get cracking!

Judging a Book by Its Cover

Lets see, we have some green goop which is presumably the monster blood flowing down stairs. Stuck in the goop are a pair of glasses. Did the monster blood eat a nerd, or does it have an astigmatism? You know it kind of reminds me of the "Ooze" that mutated the Ninja Turtles. I think there were a few real life products going around that were like this fictional monster blood except the only disaster they ended with was getting stuck in the carpet and making your parents yell at you. I know they marketed a real life version of the turtle ooze, and there was this similar stuff called "Gak" that was all soupy and squishy. They all usually came in little containers like silly putty or play dough, the only difference is you couldn't do a damn thing with them. You would roll em around your hand for awhile and go "ewwww" and that was basically it. They weren't mold able, and if you used them too much the would get cruddy and gross. I wonder if they marketed a real life version of Monster Blood? It wouldn't surprise me, Goosebumps was a marketing machine.

Anyway, so the tagline on the front is, "It's a monster blood drive!" Which I suppose is moderately clever. The tagline on the back is "Blood, blood, everywhere..." which is kind of horrifying if you think about it. Before you understand that the monster blood in question is just a slimy substance and not actual blood from some monster it seems... especially gross. I would, however, read an RL Stine book about a guy who goes around stabbing monsters and collecting their blood but I'm not sure that would have gone over real well, especially with parents...

Oh well.. What is there to say about this really? Green slime, green slime, green slime. This was the perfect book for the Nickelodeon generation. He could have written a crossover where the slime from double dare starts devouring contestants!

Anyway, lets jump to the book and see what actually happens.


Getting Goosebumps

Well this book stars a family that needs to move to a new house... because apparently every family in Goosebumps has to have a recent move involved! Thankfully there isn't too much else overly similar in this book when compared to the previous 2. This one stars a 12 year old boy named Evan, who is an only child. For reasons that I don't think are ever elaborated on, his family needs to move to Atlanta, and quickly. Since mom and dad are going to be busy with that, they drop young Evan and his old cocker spaniel Trigger off with his crazy old Aunt Kathryn. Staying true to the actions of young males in the series so far, he gets overly emotional and throws somewhat of a tantrum. Luckily he tends to get a little less moody as the book goes on.

So about that crazy old Aunt Kathryn, what makes her so crazy? Well for starters she is totally deaf and refuses to learn sign language or lip reading. She doesn't do much communicating with people, as you would guess. She is a large woman with dark black hair and a very mannish sounding voice. Oh, also she has a black cat, any crazy old lady wouldn't be complete without a cat. She completes the whole motif by continuously joking that she is a witch... or maybe she's not joking?

Well Evan doesn't care much for being around his weird aunt and his mom had given him 10 bucks to buy himself something while he is there, so he decides to head into town. On his way in he meets a girl named Andrea, who insists he call her Andy. After a weird conversation about stupid names, and stupid things, they both decide to head to the local toy store. Evan finds a dusty old can labeled Monster Blood in the back and decides to buy it. Andy is really jealous and wants some herself, but it's the only can. The owner is rather reluctant to sell it because it is "no good" and "too old." Eventually Evan convinces him to sell it to him anyway, I'm sure he wont regret this purchase!

They take it back to his aunt's place. She seems mildly interested in seeing what it is. After inspection she tells him to be careful. Nothing ominous about that! Well the kids play with it in various ways. The stuff does all kinds of stuff, it glows in the dark, stretches out, holds its shape in a ball, and bounces when you drop it. Sounds pretty neat, I hope it's not evil or something! They go outside to play because it stains things... and you know the first thing you do with a goopy mold-able toy of sorts is bring it outside! I know the first thing I do with a fresh batch of silly putty is play with it out on the lawn... Anyway, so the dog ends up eating some of it. Andy gets pissed because now there isn't enough to share. Evan however, seems a little more concerned on whether or not his dog is gonna... ya know... die.

Well the dog doesn't die, and time goes on. The aunt keeps joking that she is a witch and Evan starts thinking that she may be. It doesn't help that he notices she wears a bone as a necklace and talks to her black cat which she describes as being "evil." All this things definitely send of the "maybe she really is a witch" vibe.

Imagine the twins like this... only 15.

The weird aunt isn't Evan's only problem though . One day he was going to visit Andy and he got jumped by two 15 year old heavy metal loving twins. Andy shows up while they are hassling him, and they decided to quit hassling him and steal her bike instead. She is rather familiar with these neighborhood bullies, and refers to them as two "heavy duty dudes." Did people in the 90's talk like that? I mean, I was there and I don't remember people talking like that... Oh well.

In reality the bullies may be the least of his problems. When he gets home he discovers that his dogs collar is too tight and is choking him. He manages to gets it off and wonders how it shrank, or alternatively thinking that perhaps his old dog had grown. That would be crazy right? Later he discovers that his monster blood had grown and was oozing out of the can. There couldn't be a connection could their?


Then Evan goes to bed. When he wakes up he discovered that his dog has DOUBLED in size. Since its a cocker spaniel being double sized would make it about, oh 50 or 60 pounds? Or as RL Stine puts it, "the size of a pony." Seriously Stine, you think a pony is twice as big as a cocker spaniel? Well fortunately it was just a dream so rational measurements don't matter. As Evan wakes up he realizes that actually he had been the one growing and was now totally enormous! Wait, that was another dream. What is this, the movie Inception? Well I wouldn't know because I've never seen that movie. I just know that this false waking up chapter was 2 pages long. Seriously, two pages. I know this crap is supposed to be easy to read, but come on!

Anyway what is really growing out of control is the monster blood. It outgrew the can, the coffee can they replaced it with, and a large bucket to replace that. Evan decided to stick it in a large bathtub he found in the basement. His aunt's cat scared the crap out of him and knocked him forward into the tub and it felt like the monster blood was pulling him in. He managed to get himself out but quickly realized this was getting out of control. He and Andy filled up garbage bags with it and decided to take it back to the toy store. The store was out of business. Who saw that coming? Almost everyone. Couple this with the fact that the heavy metal twins beat the crap out of Evan and it seems like perhaps things are just not going his way.

They head home and notice Trigger has actually "doubled in size" now... ya know... to the size of a pony... and this dog manages to knock over the garbage can that the monster blood is now in. The huge mass of green glop goes crazy and seems to be alive. It's coming after Evan, and manages to roll over and envelop a robin. The weirdest thing to me, is that Monster Blood seems to be bouncing around like a Spheroid from the Ball Planet on Futurama. As this stuff bounces around like mad, the heavy metal twins show up again just in time to be consumed by the Monster Blood. Then the Monster Blood heads inside after Evan's aunt. What does this weird old lady have to say about all these goings on? "I made this thing now I must die for it." Apparently the whole "maybe she is a witch" thing has some merit...

Well it turns out her cat really IS evil. She turns into a woman and it's revealed that she cast spells on Aunt Kathryn to keep her deaf so she would have control over her. Seems like there may be better ways to make someone your servant, but oh well. Anyway it was the cat who forced the aunt to cast a spell on the Monster Blood because she was worried that Evan would find out about the secret and free his aunt... it's not like he was pretty much totally avoiding his aunt because she was weird or anything, or like he was leaving very soon. In fact right before this hubbub he found out that his parents found a house and were going to pick him up any time now.

Well the Aunt thinks that she can die and the kids will go free. Evan and Andy however know too much... because she just explained freakin' everything to them, so they have to die. She commands the Monster Blood to come eat them but once again que the giant dog to come in and knock something over. This time it was the cat-witch-woman into the Monster Blood. It seemed to consume her all, leaving no remains and then for some reason the monster blood started disappearing revealing a scared but still alive set of twins who run the heck away. Just then, Evan's mom shows up. Boy does she have some things to be filled in on!

The book gets wrapped up quickly. Kathryn now can hear and explains everything to the mother. Evan and Andy awkwardly promise to keep in touch even though he is moving. She wants a piece of the monster blood to keep as a memento of sorts but mysteriously... it's gone...


What do I think?

Man, I really didn't see the "cat is a witch-lady" thing coming. I remembered a whole bunch of the book very well but that part I didn't remember at all. I knew his aunt was involved somehow, and remembered she turned out to be "good." But... man... the cat is a person controlling her? Didn't recall that at all. Maybe because the ending was exceedingly short. The ending, however, wasn't the only thing that was short, this book has crazy short chapters. It was 128 pages, with 29 chapters which means the average chapter length is like what... 5 pages? I swear there was a chapter that was hardly one page long. Seems unnecessary.

Regardless, I think this was yet again an improvement to the series. I like that it featured a boy who was a single child, and was staying with an extended familiar member. It felt like a pretty decent change from the last two books. The book also continued to exude the notion of kids feeling powerless or unheard which I think was pretty relate-able to its audience. I liked the heavy metal bully twins. They were kind of an added "enemy" besides the obvious supernatural one we all knew was coming. Plus, A simple toy turning evil is a pretty fun premise from a kid's perspective I'm sure. Though it was obviously inspired by movies like "The Blob," it felt pretty unique for the series and I think there is a reason this is one of the more popular books.

Still it is funny seeing all the silly things Stine does in each book. Once again there was a point in this book where an unknown person startled him by grabbing his shoulder from behind. I really wonder if its going to happen in every book because so far we're 3 for 3. Also Stine loves throwing out references to stuff like Nintendo and Indiana Jones to appeal to kids.

Fun book, my favorite so far and I am kind of curious to reread the sequels to it.

Rating: 4 slimes out of 5

  

Up Next!

Book 4, Say Cheese and Die! is next up in the series. It is probably my favorite book title in the bunch except maybe for its oh so creatively titled sequel, "Say Cheese and Die Again!" Be sure to check back and see what I have to say about this one, maybe it'll be even be clever or funny or something!