Classic Goosebumps #1: Night of the Living Dummy [Mass Market Paperback]

R.L. Stine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2008 | Age Range: 8 and up | Series: Classic Goosebumps (Book 1)

Discover the original bone-chilling adventures that made Goosebumps one of the bestselling children's book series of all time!

Something scary is happening in GOOSEBUMPS HORRORLAND, the all-new, all-terrifying series by R. L. Stine. Just how scary? You'll never know unless you crack open this classic prequel!

Discover the fan-favorite thriller and chiller that first introduced the world to the wooden face of fear. The puppet who pulls all the strings. None other than Slappy the Dummy!

Now with all-new bonus material revealing Slappy's secrets and more.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

R.L. Stine's books have sold more than 300 million copies, making him one of the most popular children's authors in history. Besides Goosebumps, R.L. Stine has written series including: Fear Street, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room, and Dangerous Girls. R.L. Stine lives in New York with his wife, Jane, and his King Charles spaniel, Minnie. www.RLStine.com.

Product Details

• Age Range: 8 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0545035171
• ISBN-13: 978-0545035170
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Why is Tim Jacobus R.L. Stine's favorite illustrator? Maybe because they've done so many scary books together. Tim did the cover paintings for more than 80 Goosebumps books, as well as the six amazing Amazon books. Recently, the two of them got together and asked the questions they've always wanted to ask each other...

~~~~

TIM (the illustrator) asks R.L. STINE (the author):

TIM: When I illustrate, I can "see" the image in my head before I start to draw. Do you "hear" a story when you write?

R.L.: I hear kids when I write. I try to hear the voice of the boy or girl who is telling the story. I visit schools a lot and talk with kids so I can keep up with what they are saying these days and what real kids sound like. Then I try to hear their voices tell the story as I write it.

~

TIM: You've written so many books I can't do the math, but I bet you've used millions of words. What's you favorite word?

R.L.: Someone once got in an elevator with a very witty author named Noel Coward and said, "Say something funny." And Coward said, "Kangaroo." Kangaroo has been a favorite word of mine ever since I heard that story. But as a horror writer, I guess my favorite word is SCREAM!

~

TIM: Where is the strangest place you have come up with an idea for a story?

R.L.: An empty movie theater. My wife and I went to see a scary movie in a big, old movie house-- and we were the only ones in the theater. It was kind of creepy. Then about halfway through the movie, I turned around and saw that the back row was filled with people sitting straight and still. Suddenly, I thought-- They are zombies! I'm trapped in a dark zombie theater! And that's where the idea for the book Zombie Town came from.

~

TIM: If you couldn't write-- and you possessed all skills-- what would you like to do for a living?

R.L.: I drew comic strips from the time I was in 4th grade, and I always dreamed of being a cartoonist. You can imagine my shock when the other kids told me how bad my art was. They were right. I stunk! I got over my extreme disappointment by starting to write. But if I had the skill, I would love to do what you do, Tim.

**********

R.L. STINE (the author)asks TIM (the illustrator):

R.L.: If you couldn't be an artist what would you like to be?

TIM: I would like to be a "Snowmaker" at one of the big ski resorts, out west, like Mammoth Mountain in California. You work at night when everyone goes home. Set up the snow guns, cover the slopes, and groom them with the Sno-Cat track machine. It's kinda like a snow tank! Then, you get to ski for free! I love that snow!

~

R.L.: When we were kids, my brother and I used to go to a horror movie every Saturday. We loved them all. The covers on our six Amazon books look like movie posters to me. Were you also influenced by horror movies? If so, which ones?

TIM: I was a complete "chicken" as a kid. I couldn't sit through any horror movie. The first scary movie I saw was on TV. It isn't really a horror movie. It was the Hunchback of Notre Dame-- the black-and-white version with Charles Laughton. That movie freaked me out! The mutant, Quasimodo, was something that REALLY could exist. Black-and-white movies, black-and-white photos--they all seem more "real" than full color to me.

~

R.L.: You have painted so many great covers. I think your scariest Goosebumps cover was for The Barking Ghost. And the black cat on The 13th Warning is really creepy. Do you have a favorite cover? Is it a scary one or a funny one?

TIM: It's hard to pick a favorite. But you gotta love the blue bathroom blobs in Monster Blood IV. That one is a little creepy and WAY funny. For just outright scary, I love the ticket taker in Zombie Town!

~

R.L.: What was the weirdest thing someone ever asked you to draw?

TIM: Oh, I have drawn a lot of weird stuff. One time, I had to paint a pimple! You know... acne! It was a medical illustration. Gross. When I first started illustrating, I painted pictures of food. My food illustrations were used in the Sunday newspaper for the local supermarket. I painted every food you can imagine. I can draw a pretty mean potato!

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#72 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Horror

#72 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Horror

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars RL Stine's Magnum Opus July 12, 2009

By Hancock the Superb

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Night of the Living Dummy is quite possibly the greatest Goosebumps book ever written, with only The Ghost Next Door in serious competition. Granted, it's not a particularly prestigious title, but Dummy is still fairly effective as a piece of children's "horror" lit.

The book succeeds, first of all, for its quality of writing and atmosphere. Stine does have some bits of the cartoonish prose he would become infamous for (thanks to Troy Steele if nothing else) but on the whole it's a very well-written book by Stine's standards, with convincing dialogue and prose and great pacing. The book has the creepy atmosphere of "banal dread" which appeared in most of the early Goosebumps books; you feel like you're in a real world setting, and yet that something bad is lurking at the end of the next chapter break. The slow pace, establishing the story, characters and slowly-building events, makes the denouement - Mr. Wood coming to deadly life - all the more effective. The scenes of our protagonists wrestling Mr. Wood in the middle of the night is one of the most disturbing scenes in Goosebumps history. It truly captures the feel of the generally creepy cover (let's forget the hideous thing on the recent Horrorland tie-in release, please - Tim Jacobus is the only Goosebumps artist for me).

Stine should also be credited for creating, in Mr. Wood, a truly memorable and disturbing enemy. In sequels Slappy's antics would become repetitive and predictable, and try to compensate for this lack of creepiness by exploring Slappy's background - kind of silly given that he's a ventriloquist dummy. In this book Mr. Wood's purely malicious nature is inexplicable and made all the more creepy for it. He's just an evil character without apology or explanation, and lacking in Slappy's self-awareness - he's a truly menacing and evil antagonist.

In all, Night of the Living Dummy is one of RL Stine's best achievements, and shows that however far he has fallen over time, he did have some knack for this kind of story at one point. I can still read this book as a cynical twenty-year-old and be entertained - that in and of itself should say something.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars which dummy August 23, 2003

By "1rakestraw"

Format:Paperback

R.L. Stine has done it again with another fantastic goosebumps book.Night of the living dummy was a fantastic book about a dummy who comes to life when these mysterous words are read out loud.Kris wants a dummy and gets one which turns out to be an evil dummy.....

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Creepy! January 12, 2007

By Amy Graham

Format:Mass Market Paperback

The books in the Goosebumps series regularly seem to take the vein of a morality tale (of a twisted sort) where one virtue, evil, personality flaw, or issue is taken up as the focus of the story, and Night of the Living Dummy is no exception. The order of the day here is competition...in this volume we meet twins Lindy and Kris Powell who are constantly competing, arguing, trying out do, out wit, and one-up one another. Their parents are frazzled and fed up with these beautiful twins who seem to frequently cross the line into cruelty and viciousness, and often behaving without sympathy toward one another and others.

As we join them, the twins are exploring the house across the way from theirs when Lindy discovers a ventriloquist dummy in the construction dumpster...even better he appears to be in excellent shape. To Kris' horror, Lindy keeps the dummy, which Kris initially distains as stupid, gross, and boring. Shortly after finding him, Lindy manages to gain some skill and when her act becomes popular with their classmates...popular enough to get her some gigs doing birthday parties with her act, Kris decides that she too MUST have a dummy. Her parents initially rebuke her, dummies are expensive and try to get the girls to share which outrages Lindy...she becomes quite cruel toward her sister calling her a copy cat and really wanting this one thing for herself.

When their father manages to conveniently stumble upon a second dummy in a second hand shop for a good price, it seems like the problem is solved...but Lindy is still angry at her sister for trying to steal her thunder and begins to pose the dummy so that it appears to be alive, frightening her sister terribly...when the secret is revealed, Kris is crushed...but shortly after the dummy DOES come to life and the twins are left without their parents support (they are just fed up with talk and whining about the dummies to hear a single thing more about them). Will the girls be able to stop Mr. Wood? Will he make them his slaves? You'll have to read to find out...what you get is always different than what you expect with these stories, and Night of the Living Dummy is no exception, it does have a signature "got ya" moment at the end.

Overall, Night of the Living Dummy is well written and the characters are simple but adequately written. The girls are sympathetic in some instances and not in others...there are times in the story when you think they are getting what they deserve for the way they behaved...but in the end, you want them to pull out of it and save themselves from Mr. Wood. At the very end, just when you think it's all going to be ok, boo...an abrupt shock at the end and the story is over, leaving the reader wondering how the girls will get out of their predicament...this one reeks of sequel, which I understand there are several of. I give it five stars, this is much better written than some of the other books I've read in the series and for taking something that's already kind of creepy (the dummy) and making it horrific several times over.