Welcome to the first edition of A Case of the Bumps, where I look at the original 62 Goosebumps books and work some opinions on why the books both worked, failed, and why some feel like ideas that Stine should have built up better. I did originally review all 62 original books last year and earlier this year, and while I wait for physical copies of material to cover for later blogs, I figured I can squeeze blood from a stone and talk a bit more on the classic books, giving more extended thoughts on each of them. Last month, I started to finally collect physical copies of each of these books and one of the books I found was You Can't Scare Me! the fifteenth book first published in January of 1994. My initial rating was a C-, siting that the book gave us a lot of characters that were hard to rally behind.
To recap the plot, the book tells the story of a kid named Eddie who is absolutely obsessed with a girl named Courtney. Not in any lovey dovey way of course, but in the fact that she's so perfect. Everyone loves her, she's good at everything, and that she isn't afraid of anything. Throughout the book, Eddie, along with his friends (including a boy nicknamed Hat because R.L. Stine has a bad habit of awful nicknames), try to get Courtney, only for each of their plans being foiled, more often than not by their own ineptitude. It gets to the point that Eddie, so obsessed with this, wants to sic dogs on her. This book series would later feature a kid with an unhealthy worm obsession, and yet this kid feels more like a Criminal Minds villain in the making.
Ultimately, Eddie's last ditch attempt is to scare Courtney by using the legend of the mud monsters of Muddy Creek. How, when the town was being built, the more affluent members lived in the hills, while the poorer people were forced to live downhill. When a massive storm created a mudslide, it buried the downhill folk. Legend goes that the mud monsters still rise from the depths seeking revenge, on those who wronged them. In the end, we get a misdirect where Eddie thinks a mud monster that shows up is actually his brother and his friends filming a movie, only for his brother to show up later, giving us a stock "if you're here, then who's over there?" moment. The book gives us no stock twist at the end, instead just saying that Eddie gave up because he's now too scared.
Now, you're wondering why this of all books is my first choice for this blog series? Mainly because it serves as a great first question to ask: Why wasn't the template of You Can't Scare Me! used more in Goosebumps?
What template, you may ask? Not the stock one that is in all books, by which I mean the 12-year old put in a scary situation. But the feeling of a slice of life story that hinges far less on the supernatural. For the first fourteen books prior, the books all involved supernatural elements in one form or another. A town of the living dead, a cursed camera that takes pictures of a horrible future, a haunted mirror that turns you invisible as your reflections try to suck you into the mirror world. In this book, the ending is still ambiguous enough that you can believe that the mud monsters were real, or that Kevin and his friends were getting one off on Eddie and the others. In other words, it's the first book that restrains itself from needing a supernatural element up until the ending, and even then you can debate if the monsters were real or not.
What that leaves you with is a book about kids being kids. Granted, kids either written too "Mary Sue"-ish, or completely detestable. But otherwise, the focus is on the kids. Their interactions, their likes and dislikes. The "horror" elements of the book, up until the ending are all by their own hands. Eddie and Hat try to steal a tarantula to scare Courtney, so the events of the book focus a lot on their own trials and tribulations from trying to hide, to actually handling the spider, to ultimately failing at scaring Courtney. Another example is Eddie using Buttercup, the pet St. Bernard of a girl named Charlene, make the dog look rabid and sic it on Courtney, only for the kids to lose the dog and for Eddie to encounter a different, more angry dog, and Courtney then managing to find Buttercup and tame the other dog. In other words, You Can't Scare Me! emphasizes more on being a comedy of errors than hinging on involving elements that feel more forced than fun.
The only other book that I can recall from the original 62 that comes close to being a slice of life story devoid of a supernatural twist is Book #24 Phantom of the Auditorium, where a pair of kids named Brooke and Zeke have to find out who is sabotaging their school play of The Phantom. While that one is structured more to be a mystery story, it stays grounded in reality for the majority of the book, including giving us a misdirect of a mysterious squatter under the school named Emile, who is revealed to be the one who sabotaged most of the play, but was unaware of anything involving a phantom. In the end, the book does give us a fully supernatural ending with another boy named Brian Colson being the ghost of the boy who died in the original school performance of the phantom. So yeah, it comes close to being a full on slice of life tale, but tacks on a supernatural ending to give us a better payoff to the mystery that the book is building up on. There's also Go Eat Worms!, which comes close but then you remember the giant worm that tries to drag Todd down. Not to mention the giant butterfly with the metal pin.
Back to You Can't Scare Me! Why did I originally bog it with a C-? Because I felt it weighed on the kids in the story being unlikable for the majority, even Courtney, despite her being a good kid, is still presented as a bit unlikable, more willing to make Eddie look worse in certain situations. She throws bees at him. SHE THROWS BEES! But since I did that rating, I do feel a bit less heated towards the characters, feeling that they do feel more realistic than most of Stine's protagonists (except for, you know, throwing bees). Not all kids are good people and a lot of them do strive to make the lives of others a living hell. But having to follow these kids is also not very engaging when you realize they won't grow and better themselves when the adventure is over, and that's the case here. Eddie never gets a moment where he realizes that Courtney's bravery and "perfection" is something to be admired. There's never a moment where Eddie learns his lesson and tries to befriend Courtney after the mud monster incident. He still wants to get her, but he's too scared from the experience. I don't mean to make this a gender issue, but I do feel the majority of the more unlikable protagonists, the ones that are the most whiny, cruel, or foolish, are the males. And while there are ones who can be worse for other reasons, Evan's whining, Gabe's sexism, Eddie's is the most stubborn to admit defeat in this forced war against one girl.
So, while this book has its share of glaring issues, ultimately I stick by what I said early on about how this template should have been more of the norm for the series. As, while there are a lot of books that still work without it, Stine's formula of going too over the top with his stories often lead to books he either runs out of steam for (The Barking Ghost, The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena) or goes so over the top that it becomes a mess to read (Monster Blood IV, Chicken Chicken). Sometimes you need more grounded books to enjoy and while it's not perfect, the best example of that is definitely You Can't Scare Me!
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