Rereading My Childhood: Goosebumps

Monster Blood

Most of my teachers had some kind of twenty minute quiet time after lunchtime recess. At around 11:30, my entire class and I piled into the hallway and stood in line (if you wanted hot lunch). We paid the lunch lady our $0.75 each at the front or used one of those punch cards the kids with pre-paid lunch had. We grabbed our food, sat down, and ate as fast as we could so we could get outside and run around like little idiots as quickly as possible. After a full thirty minutes of mindless laughing and cavorting with our fellow classmates, the bell rang and forced us back into the green walls of the school, away from the sun and into tedium. Then our teacher made us read. At least we got to choose the book.

"Read one chapter of a book," she demanded.

We had a book. We had a popular book. It wasn't cool to read unless you read R. L. Stine's Goosebumps.

"Read one chapter of a book."

I see why these books were popular - there are 128 pages in Monster Blood and 29 chapters. That's an average of four pages a chapter.

"Read one chapter of a book."

That was easy and only took a minute.

Of course, I wasn't that child. I had cold lunch, so I had to sit by myself on the other side of the cafeteria. The school separated "hot lunch" students (those who paid money) and "cold lunch" student (those who brought their lunch from home). All my friends brought money to school (eventually, I started asking my mother for money just so I could sit with my friends), and we had to sit in specific seats that a fifth grader designated for us (it wasn't a bully situation - the school lunch ladies bestowed onto them that power). I enjoyed the thirty-minute recess because I could read whatever I wanted, instead of what my teacher wanted me to read. When the bell rang, it was more of a relief for me. It was time to get up from the ground, brush off the dirt, and read inside - a minor location change. I didn't mind a long chapter and I never stopped reading after only one chapter. I read until I was the last one still reading and my teacher had to ask me to come back to the boring real world.

I don't remember the small chapters of Goosebumps, but I remember the cliffhangers. For a while, I was convinced that every horror book had to have a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter and each book. Some writers haven't grown out of this, as evidenced by adult novels with knives and guns and scantily clad women victims on the covers. R. L. Stine's cliffhangers are on full display in Monster Blood. There are some good ones with genuine danger - mostly at the end of the book. However, the most prevalent ones are the frustrating ones where it turns out to be a someone making a sandwich (really) or a dream sequence. I wasn't sure if I wasn't going to like this one until I reached the end. Everything goes bonkers. The cliffhangers involve actual danger, and the short chapters are a minor inconvenience, rather than a jarring interruption.

SPOILERS AFTER THE COVER!!!