Call me a coward if you like, but I've never been into horror stories, or ghost stories either for that matter. Some people love them, find thrill in the fear, but I've never seen the pleasure in frightening myself! I just don't understand it! Maybe it's because I'm one of life's worriers, or because I have quite a vivid imagination and once something gets in there it tends to stick around. Needless to say I'd never read the Goosebumps book as a child. I know lots of people to whom these books were the staple of their childhood reading, but alas, not me. I remember looking at these books in the library when I was little and being put off by the slightly grim illustrations on the covers! So, as you can imagine I was a little wary of what these creepy looking books would contain, even at 24!
As the list didn't specify which book from the series I should read I went for the first one I could get hold of, Welcome to Dead House, a story about a family that moves into a creepy old mansion full of ghosts. As I've already said I don't have a stomach for ghost stories. Don't get me wrong I love watching Most Haunted for example and debunking the sightings and sounds, but in literary form I just don't like spooky or morbid things. It's just a children's book I hear you say, and I know I must sound like a total wimp, but I just couldn't get on with Welcome to Dead House, with its ghost children and dreams of dying. With this in mind I headed out to Trelissick Gardens, our local National Trust, to see if they had any other Goosebumps titles in their second hand bookshop. Luckily they had plenty of them to choose from! Children seem to devour these books one at a time but never read them again, as they often pop up in these kinds of places. Despite being tempted by a story about a murderous piano teacher, I opted for the rather amusingly titled Revenge of the Garden Gnomes! Much better, less death and more fantasy.
As with Welcome to Dead House, I was initially annoyed by the Americanised writing style, predictable story line and short staccato sentences. But then I remember that it was a children's book and not a work of classic adult literature! I guess these stories are aimed at the 6-10 age bracket, depending on their content, and the short chapters, fast paced story, lots of dialogue, and easy to grasp characters would make them a satisfying read for most children. I expect it would be quite easy, once you got the taste for them, to read them all, one after another. Although these type of books were never my cup of tea i'm still glad they exist, because a series like Goosebumps could be the catalyst that gets a child reading, which is invaluable!
Ok, to the story. The Revenge of the Garden Gnomes follows the strange goings on in a family's garden after the dad brings home two slightly creepy looking garden gnomes. The next door neighbour and the dad are both growing produce for a local fruit and veg competition, and the cheeky gnomes cause all kinds of fruit based mischief, coming alive at night and squashing things, eating stuff and even drawing faces on the melons! For a while Joe, the son, tries to convince his parents that the gnomes keep coming alive at night and causing all this trouble, but instead he and his dog Buster get the blame! This goes on for a while, with something different happening every night. In the end Joe and his friend Moose (?) stake out the gnomes and catch them in the act! Unfortunately they get spotted and the gnomes come after them, kidnapping Joe's sister Mindy in the process. Once they've got the children's attention they spin a rather hammy yarn about having been taken from their natural forest habitat and forced to be garden ornaments by the sweet old lady that owns the garden ornaments shop! The gnomes ask the children to accompany them to Lawn Lovely (again, ?) the garden ornaments shop, to free the other 6 gnomes that are in the basement. Now, this is clearly a trap, but as we know from Tintin, story characters seem to be very gullible! So the children go with the gnomes and get trapped in the basement of the shop with hundreds of evil garden gnomes!! Not cool! The dog Buster becomes their only hope of escape, as Joe believes the gnomes are scared of him. This hope is short lived however, when Buster abandons them, not liking the smell of the basement, which as Stine graphically explains, stinks of gnome sweat!! Anyway, the children finally discover that it's Buster's dog whistle that the gnomes are scared of and not the dog himself. It turns out that the whistle transforms the gnomes to stone, which conveniently allows the children to escape! Hooray! When they return home they discover that their dad has bought a new garden ornament, to replace the gnomes he believes have been stolen. As Joe looks at the new garden gorilla it winks at him! Could it all be happening again......
This was a truly bizarre story and I commend R.L Stine on his ability to come up with these strange story lines, especially as there are 62 Goosebumps books!
Thanks for reading, L x
Next up The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
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