Part of my plan for this reread series is to look at the Goosebumps books one more time and give a fresher set of thoughts. And I feel that one of the best ways to do that is to also stop every now and then and look back at the most recently covered batch and give my thoughts on what worked, what didn't work, and how R.L. Stine's style changed over time. So, every ten books (twelve for the last batch), we'll stop and reflect in a little spot I call Horrific Hindsight.
In a different world, this would have been the end of Goosebumps proper. In a different world, Goosebumps would have ended with six books total. Scholastic wouldn't suffer from the releases and continue going their own way with The Babysitters Club remaining their biggest success story. R.L. Stine would be fine too, continuing with the successful Fear Street while also serving as head writer of Eureeka's Castle. Goosebumps would have been a blip on his radar. the weird little footnote of a brief romp in children's horror.
Of course, fate had other plans, and thanks to the Scholastic Book Fairs along with just general chatter over the books from kids, Goosebumps found an audience and the popularity grew like it had just eaten Monster Blood. And thus six became ten and ten became hundreds of books.
So, how do the first ten books fare overall? I think time has been kindest to them the most. They are the first in the series and feature some of the more memorable stories and cover art. When people bring up Goosebumps in a nostalgic sense, many of these books are the ones people bring up. Night of the Living Dummy, Say Cheese and Die!, Welcome to Camp Nightmare. You mention those titles and even the person who locked the series away far in the back of their memory banks will nod and be like "Oh, I remember those." These ten, along with the ten that follow are the ones with the most nostalgia heaped upon them, and thus I feel they're the ones that need to hold up the most. And I can say, that for the most part, yeah, these hold up pretty well.
You can tell that Stine hasn't fallen into his own tropes and quirks just yet with these ones. Protagonists are likable for the most part, with books often giving enough focus on their fears and concerns. An unfamiliar place, family members acting strange all of a sudden, trying to understand the power of a magical object. They also feel like real kids. Their banter is usually far better, they play around, or even watch movies they're way too old to watch. Friends that will be on the protagonist's side, while still giving them grief and sometimes peer pressure. Younger siblings can be annoying and overly energetic, but not to the point of being unbearable. The stories often rely on the mystery, sometimes ramping things up as they go forward. Sometimes, like Say Cheese and Die or even The Ghost Next Door, the book makes things too obvious too early, but they aren't a total determent to the story that it makes them a chore to sit through.
Something that wowed me going back is how long a lot of the chapters were. In modern books, chapters are 2-6 pages on most occasions. Here, they feel longer than that, likely given that most books hit past the 130 pages mark. Though by the time of The Ghost Next Door, we were already seeing Stine start to drop them pages quick. Other notes are that gotcha scares, while numerous in most books, aren't as prevalent as they are later. Some books like Welcome to Camp Nightmare practically has next to none. I will say there are too many dream sequences, some to the point that Stine just adds a dream after a dream. Thankfully it's not that prevalent. And then there's twists. There are some amazing twists, but mostly a lot of mediocre ones. But we'll get into the best of them very soon.
This reread of the first ten made me appreciate some books more, while I feel making me depreciate some other books I thought I liked better. I think that's good praise for the first ten in the series. With the single digits behind him and soon the books going monthly, it'll be more interesting with the tens to see just how different things feel, because most feel that the real shift in Stine's style, mostly for the worst, begins smack in the middle of the tens. We'll see for sure just how true that is. But for the first ten, they come highly recommended.
AWARDS
And now we reward the books that shone and short-circuited with the awards section. The awards will come in several categories that represent which books had the most strengths and weaknesses throughout the run. With each recipient earning either the gold, silver, bronze, or bottom of the barrel Stine award. So without further ado, let's get awarding.
GOLD STINE AWARDS
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