Well, with 400 books covered at this point, I think it's time for a look back at the blog. You know, before the year in review blog as per usual. We have covered a lot of books here for the blog, and it's always interesting to see just what zaniness can come from books like these. And then there are moments in some of these books that have left me speechless in just how shocking they are. Some that leave you wondering "THIS was in a book for kids?" There are plenty of fine choices to choose from, but for the sake of brevity, we'll focus on ten of them. We might come back to this so best not to blow the entire load on one go, right? Let's peel off the band-aid one more time and cover ten shocking moments in the blog (so far).
#10. THE TARANTULA (Bone Chillers #02: Little Pet Shop of Horrors): In fairness, I could put the entire book in this entry, because at the end of the day, this is a girl who turns into a dog and is mostly abused, returns to normal and, oh yeah, is implied to be naked so what the fuck, Betsy? But I think for brevity's sake, I'll just put the one major scene that comes off as disturbing when you think about it. Cassie Cavanaugh visits a mysterious new pet shop owned by the strange Mr. Willard after her friend David Ferrante got a tarantula there. David heads back there because he accidentally sat on and killed the tarantula. Now that's freaky enough, but we'll get to it in a minute.
Cassie ends up drugged by Mr. Willard and when she wakes up, she's turned into a dog. It turns out that this is the M.O. of Mr. Willard. Kidnapping children and turning them into animals to sell at his pet shop. Now rewind your mind a moment to what I just said about David's tarantula that he sat on. Given what we know, it's highly likely that tarantula was a human child transformed into a spider. A spider who gets killed almost immediately after this transformation. And that still feels like the window dressing to a book with kids who are turned into animals who if they're brought back to the pet shop are put to sleep. I don't know what Betsy Haynes was on when writing this but holy shit.
#09. MICAH'S PHOTO (Revenge R Us): I promise this wasn't just an excuse to bring Revenge R Us back from the dregs, but if I am to talk about shocking moments, then most of Revenge R Us would count. But it's still one scene in particular that just makes for the most questionable moment in all of Goosebumps. In the book, our protagonist Wade is constantly bullied by her older brother Micah, which includes one infamous case of blackmail in which Micah shows Wade a photo of her sleeping in her underwear, to which he threatens to send to people to embarrass her. So, in essence, we have a book about a seventeen year old boy taking candid photos of his half-naked sister with the intention of humiliating her. Did a pedophile ghostwrite this?
I'll also add honorable (dishonorable?) mention to pretty much every time a kid is naked or in their underwear in these books which, you'd be surprised how much that happens. I don't think it was malicious on Stine's part, or says anything about him specifically, but almost always feels like overkill from a guy who doesn't seem to understand the downside of overkill. And we have a lot of Stine here to cover, so you can see that first hand. But yeah, this crosses a line for me that it's easily something that I feel is shocking enough for a mention.
#08. JENNY IS MR. HAGEN (The Babysitter III): Speaking of old wounds, let's talk about how Stine ruined The Babysitter series again and how he can't be trusted to write about trauma. For the uninitiated, The Babysitter is a series of books about a girl named Jenny Jeffers, who in the first book, is stalked and almost murdered by a man named Mike Hagen. See, Hagen's youngest daughter died on account of negligence by the girl babysitting her and since then he's been luring babysitters to his house and killing them. He almost kills Jenny by throwing her into a quarry, but ends up falling over himself and dying. The second book sees Jenny constantly in fear of Mr. Hagen, imaging him everywhere and worrying he could be alive... or undead, I guess?
So then there's a third book and we again focus on Jenny who is again having visions of Mr. Hagen everywhere she goes. And soon the phone calls begin with someone on the other line claiming to be Mr. Hagen. The thing is, only Jenny's cousin Debra is getting these calls. After "Mr. Hagen" kidnaps the baby of a woman named Ms. Wagner, Debra soon realizes the answer. Mr. Hagen is Jenny. See, Jenny's trauma is so bad that she snapped and now thinks she IS Mr. Hagen. And oh did this piss me off. Because it spits in the face of Jenny as a character and trivializes her trauma into making her "crazy". It may easily be Stine's worst portrayal of mental health. By turning Jenny into the villain of the story, he makes it clear that Jenny no longer matters as a character that should be able to move forward from trauma, but instead be someone to pity because look at the wacko everyone! Stine's also done multiple personalities before and they've always felt cringe, but none have ever shocked and pissed me off at the same time quite like this one.
#07. GEORGIE'S MUTILATION/THE DEER SUIT (The Nightmare Room #06: They Call Me Creature!): If I really wanted to, I could make this entire list animal deaths in Stine books. But we need a little variety, so I'll limit it to the two more screwed up moments in Stine's wheelhouse from The Nightmare Room. Starting with They Call Me Creature! While this is a ten moments thing, I'll break the rule here as there are really two that could count. We'll start with Georgie, the dog belonging to protagonist Laura. The dog is found on the ground, one of his legs bitten off, pouring blood, its veins and bone exposed in gruesome detail. A victim of the titular "creature" of the book. Stine loves to kill animals in his books, to the point it does get eye-rolling, but there's something more shocking and raw when the animal is still alive and suffering.
And we're not even done with the animal mutilation as one of the victims of the creature is a deer. As Laura tries to find out what's going on, she almost gets caught by a pair of men from the military, so she hides inside the flesh of a dead deer like a Tauntaun. The Nightmare Room is an interesting series of books if only for how raw and brutal they could be. An attempt to ramp up his work by adding more shock value and, at times, darker horror. And I think it's the strongest in this book.
#06. THE R-SLUR (I Saw You That Night!): Stine's works are probably the most PG works there are, especially his teen horror works. Yes, they are laden with murdered teens, but in terms of hard language or situations, they're child's play compared to someone like Christopher Pike. So imagine the shock when out of the frigging blue, Stine just throws an R-slur in one of his books. I Saw You That Night! Is an okay book at best that follows much of Stine's normal formula. But early in the book, protagonist Roxie mentions that she's R******d at French. Like, even for a book in the mid 90s, pulling that out of the hat feels so wrong. Stine rarely goes that blue and yeah, call me sensitive, but I shouldn't expect to be caught THAT off guard with the Goosebumps guy's work.
#05. CASUAL CANNIBALISM (Bone Chillers #07: Frankenturkey II): Hey, was the implied animal transformation and child abuse not wild enough for you? Well Betsy Haynes has a whopper for you! Frankenturkey II is a strange book. And the first one is strange in its own right. In the sequel, Annie and Kyle find a magic wishbone from Frankenturkey and it can grant actual wishes. This includes bringing their old turkey Gobble-De-Gook back from the dead (with maggots and everything), and to try to keep the bird safe, Annie wishes that Kyle would fatten up for Thanksgiving Dinner. And oh man, does that ever happen.
Because the magic wish takes that literally and we spend much of the conclusion with Kyle fattening up and the parents getting ready to kill him as his IS Thanksgiving Dinner. They ready the axe to chop him up, Kyle readies his head for the chopping and a debate over when they should kill Kyle because there might not be any fridge space left. See, this is the stuff that makes me happy to have chosen this blog concept. Because when you get the real crazy shit, it becomes so memorable that you can never forget it. No matter how hard you try.
#04. THE MELTING DALMATIAN (The Nightmare Room #04: Liar Liar): Hey, so if the mutilated dog from They Call Me Creature was crazy enough, a few books prior came one moment that was even more insanely shocking and dark. Liar Liar tells the story of a boy named Ross who ends up in a parallel universe where he isn't supposed to be in. As such, he seems to corrode everything he touches, a sign of him being a danger to this dimension. And if you needed proof of that, he gets attacked by a Dalmatian that in the other dimension is normally nice to him. Ross tries to get the dog off him, when suddenly he sees his handprints imprinted on the dog. Suddenly its fur begins to fall off, as does its flesh, with the dog collapsing as nothing more than a husk. I've read a Fear Street where the killer just snaps a kitten's neck and even that I wasn't prepared for. If Stine was intending for pure shock value, he certainly delivered. You don't get more shock value than a melting dog.
#03. THE BARN (Shadow Zone: Attack of the Mutant Bugs): Of the Shadow Zone books I've read so far for the blog, I mostly get the sense of a less insane Goosebumps. Still filled with supernatural elements, but never going to outright shock you. And then I read Attack of the Mutant Bugs, a book about a group of human miners who, due to radiation (and the poorly described "Shadow Zone") transform into giant mantises. It reaches its apex with one scene in particular where protagonists Katie and Miles hear the clicking of mantises in a nearby barn, and when they go inside, they find half-eaten, mutilated animals. Chickens with their heads bitten off, cows, horses and pigs with parts bitten off. Blood everywhere. And the animals that are still alive screaming in nightmarish agony.
As messed up as this moment was, I feel that this was the moment I realized I kind of love Shadow Zone. Like, it's not a perfect book series, but I've yet to find one I dislike and they proved that they won't pull punches if the need be. One of my favorite discoveries since starting this blog, but yeah. Holy crap I wasn't ready for that.
#02. THE ENDING OF THE AWFUL APPLE ORCHARD (Shivers #7: The Awful Apple Orchard): Shivers is an interesting book series as while it's mostly a GB-like, it also feels like one that goes much harder and much darker than anything I've read when it comes to kids books. And The Awful Apple Orchard is no exception. Probably because the ending of this book caught me way off guard for a book that was entirely about strange ghost apple pranks. Siblings Daniel and Sara are haunted by something at an apple orchard that seems to lead them into the mill. Sara gets caught on a conveyor belt, only for Daniel to save her in time. As the two head to bed, they feel like something isn't right, and then return to the mill to find two bodies crushed in the machinery. THEIR BODIES!
This may be the darkest ending I've read for any of these books which is saying a lot. I almost have to commend Shivers and Spenser for going as hard on this ending as possible. As such, I think it works for a more frightening and memorable finale to the story. I mean, you aren't going to forget a story that ends with children crushed in machinery, that's for sure.
#01. THE FARMHOUSE FAMILY (Shivers #33: The Forgotten Farmhouse): When I started this blog, I did it mostly in the intent to catch up on the books I never read as a kid. Goosebumps was one, and stuff like Shivers was another. That and all the other stuff, the Goosebumps-likes. And I started Not Necessarily The Goose, which was a blog section for those GB-likes. And, for the most part, I thought I'd be getting a similar to Goosebumps experience. Maybe some more shocking stuff, but relatively tame for a young audience.
My first book for this blog was Shivers #33: The Forgotten Farmhouse, and good lord was that a band-aid rip if ever there was one.
The book is super slow and bland to begin, with Nico and Ana building up the story but delivering little. They get lost from their trail guide and arrive in a foggy patch before finding a secluded farmhouse. They go to the door and almost get shot by a shotgun held by a man named Bob, mouth twisted, eye missing, a clear walking corpse. His wife Mary has no back of her head and blood spattered on her dress. Their son with a rearranged face, their daughter with most of the top of her head missing. This is a family who were brutally murdered, shot and killed, and try to kill whoever comes their way.
I have read a ton of these books since and even though some of the other Shivers books do get dark at times, nothing has ever topped the visual of mutilated living corpses in a book intended for fifth-graders. And I think for as shocked as I was, that was the moment that took this blog from fun side-project to full on obsession that, as we are about to enter year four, is still going strong and is sure to find a whole bunch of insane moments to come. Only time will tell.
Before we leave, here are some honorable mentions:
The body in the cabinet (Piano Lessons Can Be Murder)
Almost the entire Animorphs #5: The Predator
I Live In Your Basement!
The dark fate of William the Shop keep (Wanted: The Haunted Mask)
Snapping a Kitten's Neck (First Date)
The Class of 1947 (The Haunted School)
Most of The Curse of the New Kid
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