#applecomedy

neither do #goosebumps books

1 year ago today I finished my first Goosebumps book.  Now, 56 books later- I am 2 Goosebumps away from finishing my entire collection.  I am so #blessed and #spooked that I was able to spend the last year reading Goosebumps books.  I feel confident that my reading skills have improved, my nightmares have become more frequent and I’m way better at scaring kids now. Thank you to my parents, R.L. Stine, my friends, my Goosebumps fan fiction poetry collective, and most of all- all the ghosts, ghouls, spells and haunted houses out there, without you, I’d have disappeared a LONG LONG time ago.

Our piece begins with Jaclyn reciting a poem that she can’t remember the last verse too.  It was a poem that has been with her since birth...she does remember...”Beware, the snowman”.  Jaclyn lives with her Aunt Greta, her legal guardian, in Chicago.  Her mother passed away when she was young and her father mysteriously disappeared (remember this!).  Aunt Greta moves Jaclyn to a tiny town in the Arctic Circle (cold!) called Sherpia.  When they get there Jaclyn finds it odd that every house has the same red-scarfed snowman in the front yard.  She quickly meets 2 neighborhood kids and they tell her of the evil snowman who lives on the hill.  Everyone has to have the snowmen in their yards to appease the evil snowman.  They tell Jaclyn about Conrad, a mystical man who has a wolf-like dog, who protects the evil snowman.  When Jaclyn asks her Aunt Greta, she pretends to be all like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about”...(BUT SHE DOES!) Jaclyn decides to go up the icy mountain and do some investigating for herself.  Her 2 friends come with her and distract Conrad and she goes and see’s the evil snowman!  When she goes to the snowman, it turns out he can speak and he says he is Jaclyn’s father!  He tells Jaclyn that he and her mother are sorcerers and her mother was killed by her Aunt Greta, and he was put under a snowman spell.  Then Aunt Greta shows up and says the monster is lying- Jaclyn tries to figure out who is right.  Aunt Greta says the snowman is an evil monster- NOT her father, but Jaclyn has to see for herself.  She then remembers the last words of her favorite poem, says them, and the snow melts off the snowman and he becomes AN EVIL MONSTER!  Aunt Greta and Jaclyn prepare to be thrown off a mountain when a whole army of snowmen come to their rescue!  It turns out, Conrad, who is magical, is Jaclyn’s Dad!  He had to stay in Sherpia to protect the village from the snowman and he called for the snowmen to save Greta and Jaclyn.  They are happy and decide to be together forever! This book got good in the end, but really took a while to THAW out.  I give it 5 Goosebumps, it was cold, gave me chills at times, but ultimately, I never WARMED up to it!  I guess I’ll wait for the next one to SPRING up!

OK!  This 'bumps book had a one way ticket to crazy town.  Giant cats?  Talking dog boys?  I am guessing there was some serious acid associated with the creation of this epic.  This book get's 8,998 Goosebumps because I read it while sitting cold in my car and I respect R.L.'s love for animals.

8990 Goosebumps!  I didn't love this book, but there was some interesting ground covered.  First off- Harry kinda liked Lucy (a girl at camp) and this was one of the first times we dealt with 12 year old love, didn't mind it- kinda liked it.  The end felt like a cop out- "don't believe in it and it will be gone", I don't know- why can't they die or get taken over?  It's happened in other books- we don't always have to tie things up with a bow.  I guess in the end it would have been cool if Harry hooked up with Lucy and then went back to school and said, "Yup- I went to second base with a ghost!"

OK, I know I can be a pretty hard person to please, but the Say Cheese and Die books "R-2-Die-4" (that's me giving those books a high/scary rating).  They're horrifying and topical, haunted cameras, everyone can relate in 2015. Greg Banks is a 12 year old boy who is done with his summer break.  When he hands in his summer report about the evil camera that almost killed him, he gets a big fat F.  Sourball Saur (Mr. Saur, his teacher) tells Greg that his report had to be true.  Greg gets so upset, and desperate for a good grade, he goes back to the Coffman House and GETS the camera (I smell some trouble)!  He decides he's going to prove to his teacher that it's evil and do nothing else with it, but unfortunately things don't go according to plan... Greg snaps a photo of a local boy, and the boy steps directly on a nail...Evil...When he gets back to his house he invites Shari over (remember the girl who disappeared?  Ok, chill...just checking).  She is so frightened, and Greg accidentally snaps a photo of her.  Then she snaps one of him! (Wha-Wha-WHAAT!)  In the next few days, Greg gets extremely fat and Shari gets really thin.  When they're both about to explode and disintegrate, respectively, they go to a camera store and decide to get negatives made of the photos.  If they can reverse the photos, maybe the evil will go away.  It works!  But Greg still decides to bring his camera in to show Sourball Saur, and the teacher takes a photo of the entire class...Yowzaaaa/I smell tons of dead kids! Ok, this book gets 88 Goosebumps.  I think it was a solid sequel to an incredible Goosebumps book.  It was scary- evil cameras are scary- I guess I just missed some of Greg's despair.  I didn't buy that he was on the brink of death and just sitting with his tiny friend trying to figure out how to solve it.  What if the idea didn't come to them?  How do all of R.L.'s characters always think of the answer?  What if once, just once, they didn't?  Ok, now I'm scaring myself, maybe that's why he doesn't do it.  #RLknowsbest