Home Sweet Home - 30 Tales to Give You Goosebumps #22

"Home Sweet Home." That's the name of our story today and it is a heartwarming sentiment. It will be interesting to see how R.L. Stine skews its meaning. I've heard from a reliable study that 90% of all spookings occur at the home. Let's see what kind of spooking resides within this story.

Sharon is a 12 year old girl with a 9 year old sister Alice. She's not particularly nice to her sister but she manages to stop being mean to her sister's dolls long enough to take her to a garage sale. The sale is at Mrs. Forester's house but for some reason she isn't even there. She just has a sign out that says to leave the money for payment on the table. Strange. But then people say Mrs. Forester is very strange indeed. There are rumors she can turn into animals. Alice finds a little lamp she'd like to buy for her doll house. Sharon looks around absently, and picks up a nice bowl. When she notices there is a big gross spider on it she tosses it in a panic, shattering the dish. Does she do the responsible thing and pay for what she broke? No, she runs away. Typical.

From then on Sharon started seeing spiders everywhere. She saw one that night coming to get her in her bed. It had a white stripe down its back, like the one in Mrs. Forester's hair. When her parents came in to see what the commotion was all about there was no spider to be found. Next she saw the same spider coming out of the sewers on a bike ride. Finally the spider attempted to kill her by dropping a chandelier on her. No joke, this shit happened. The spider clamps on to her head, and Sharon knows who it is: Mrs. Forester. The spider lady informs Sharon that now she is a small problem. A small problem. In fact Sharon is very small indeed. But don't worry about her, she has a nice life living in her sisters dollhouse.

My Thoughts

This story has some things going for it. Old ladies are creepy. Spiders are creepy. Old ladies that turn into spiders are doubly creepy. Then ending blows it though. It is a twist ending that goes for a humorous fate rather than anything that makes sense or is scary. A common plight of the Goosebumps story.

So listen, every kid has broken something they shouldn't have and then ran away or lied about it to cover it up. If you were an OK kid you even had the decency to feel guilty about it. What if there  was a creepy spider to help you feel even more horrible about it? Spiders are scary. Except, spiders are only KINDA scary. See the thing about spiders is that they are small. You can step on them or smush them with a napkin. The fact that it is also an old lady gives it some intelligence, so it can scheme. The cutting a cord to drop a chandelier on Sharon made sense. It was a good plot development. Magically shrinking Sharon was a dumb plot development. If she had this kind of magic why bother with being a spider at all? 

Also, I just gotta come out and say it, is attempted murder and permanent miniaturization really a just punishment for breaking a bowl you care so little about that you are selling it at a garage sale that you yourself aren't even present for? I mean I get she's the villain here, but come on. I feel like something of more worth really needed to be the catalyst for Mrs. Forester's vendetta.

The only thing that works about the twist is the aspect that Sharon is mean to her sister and her dolls, and then she has to live in her doll house. Don't her parents have something to say about this? Are they cool with this arrangement? Can't they just buy Mrs. Forester a new bowl or something? Or maybe spray her with some raid?

Basically this story has some ok ideas, they just don't all mesh and pan out into a decent story. He needed either up the creepy factor a little, or make the funny aspects of it actually work well. He did neither. Still if you've got a weird old lady in your neighborhood, maybe you could use this to convince your kid she can turn into a spider. Worth a try.

Rating: 2 spiders that are probably some mean old ladie out of 5

Check back tomorrow when I read "Don't Wake Mummy." Presumably a mummy will be involved. Hopefully it is better than the Tom Cruise movie.

Good Friends - 30 Tales to Give You Goosebumps #5

Welcome back to another review of one of the 30 Tales to Give You Goosebumps that'll be going on all throughout October. Today's story 5, "Good Friends." I think we'll learn that the real goosebumps are the friends we made along the way...

Dylan and Jordan are the "good friends" the title of this story seem to be referring to. Like all great Goosebumps characters they are in middle school. Where they are unique though is in their family problems. Dylan has an overbearing jerk of an older brother just dying to get him in trouble when he watches him after school. Jordan has a younger sister that plays with an imaginary friend all the time.

Ok, well I guess Jordan doesn't have much of a problem but he feels like he does. Little sisters are so annoying! That's why he always plays tricks on her and teases her about her imaginary friend. Dylan goes along with it because Dylan is a follower, and also he seems to be pretty meek.

Jordan in his deviant little mind hatches a plan to use one sibling to harass the other. Dylan's older brother has 2 pet tarantulas that would absolutely freak out Jordan's sister. I would just like to point out the detail that the spiders' names are Axel and Foley which I am pretty sure is a reference to Beverly Hills Cop. Nice.

The plan is simple, "borrow" the spiders, scare the sister, convince her one has eaten her imaginary friend. Kind of mean, but that's how older siblings get their kicks. Step one is easy enough. The spiders were secured with no fuss. They sneak towards Jordan's sister...

CAUGHT! Dylan's older brother caught him red handed. That's right, Dylan stole his older brother's spiders and why? So he could play with his imaginary friend Jordan and his imaginary sister. What a dweeb, he's too old to have imaginary friends!

My Thoughts

Ok, my first thought is, "that ending is like a rated G version of the Sixth Sense." Also, spoiler alert, BRUCE WILLIS IS IMAGINARY.

This story follows suit with the others by really gearing up for a twist ending. The twist ending here works pretty well though. While you are trying to sniff out the twist you are thinking about the spiders or about the sister's imaginary friend. Heck you might even be thinking about the mean older brother. But I don't think you were thinking "Dylan is the one with imaginary friends." He must be a creative kid. He invented an imaginary friend with an imaginary sister who has an imaginary imaginary friend.

Some aspects of the story remind me a bit of my childhood. Not the imaginary friends or spiders, but the relationship between Dylan and Jordan. I remember hanging around friends that were really mean to their little sisters for no apparent reason. It was awkward. I think I was always the mild mannered one, who was like "this isn't a good idea guys." Probably young readers will identify with one character or the other. I think one of the best things about these books is when a young person can relate to it a little.

Not to get too nice to this story. It still follows a very familiar formula and doesn't shake things up too terribly much. Also this isn't so much scary as it is a "mind freak." I think it could freak some 9 year old minds though. I mean.. what if I'm imaginary RIGHT NOW?!?

Rating: 4 out of 5 Axel Foleys

And once again I'll remind you to check back tomorrow and every day in October for another review from the short story collection 30 Tales to Give You Goosebumps.