I remember Goosebumps quite fondly.  I always wanted to collect the entire series of books, and every time the Book Fair would come to my primary school I would fondle the books hopefully, but I didn’t receive pocket money so in all my years at primary school there was only one year I had enough money to buy a book, and I chose a Goosebumps book.

My parents bought me the 3-in-1 collections – just the first two, but it was 6 Goosebumps books to read and love to add to the one I already owned and the two or three I’d read from the school library. Then when I was a little more flush (probably after a birthday or Christmas or something) I bought some of the Give Yourself Goosebumps books.

All in all, I have fond memories of Welcome to Dead House, Stay Out of the Basement (which was even read to us by our Year 3 teacher), Say Cheese and Die, Let’s Get Invisible, Return of the Mummy, Night of the Living Dummy, The Ghost Next Door,  The Experiments of Doctor Eek, Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter and a few more I may have gotten out of the library but can’t quite recall the full titles and stories but only bits…

I ended up reading Shivers books as well because they were much cheaper to buy (only £1 from Lewins, I recall, and just as scary) but I suppose that Goosebumps stuck with me more because it was so popular, and because of the television series. I wasn’t a huge fan of the TV series – it never really matched up to how I imagined the books, and I preferred Are You Afraid of the Dark? for the scare-factor. I did watch quite a few episodes though which is why some of the books may seem familiar to me even if I didn’t read them.

The Mission

Enough about my past love affair with Goosebumps. The mission is to see how they fare now. Do they still scare? Or is it the nostalgia that makes the books so great? I will read all of the classic Goosebumps books and see how they stand as books for kids, as scary books, as the books of my childhood, and give them a review.
Here goes!

If I can get my hands on some of the Give Yourself Goosebumps books, I will try and review those too. I wish I still had my copies. I think they may be up in the loft, but if they are they will probably be all mouldy which makes me so unbelievably sad.  Still, I have some kindle copies of the Goosebumps books (though the covers are awful compared to the ones I remember…  but more on that in the reviews!