Customer Reviews

Classic Goosebumps #1: Night Of The Living Dummy

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Amy Kramer wants a new dummy cause her old dummy Dennis is beat up and his head falls off!!! One day her father brings home a new dummy he bought from a pawnshop named Slappy. After reading words off a slip of paper is when all the trouble starts. It slaps her dad, winks at her, makes rude remarks about her parents. The birthday party is trashed, Sara's room is destroyed. Until one night when Slappy needs to talk to Amy about something. He says shes his slave. Later on Dennis comes in. I'm on my knees! read this book! it's great! Slappy rules!

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.

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.....

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.

When i first rented this book in my school library,it was the first one that was creepy!Although i havent read the other two,their proboly good.I believe that the next two will proboly be much more scary.In other words.......READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!

All you people out there should read this book, as it is scary, unbelievable, and outstanding reading. Scary because Mr. Wood, the dummy, walks around the house, talks, and spits green slime. A doll coming to life, makes it unbelievable. Outstanding reading for those who like thrillers, monsters, and freaks.

Amy's ventriloquist dummy Dennis is literally losing his head. Her father gets a used dummy from a pawn shop, which she's going to use to practice her routine. But soon things start happening and Amy start to realise something is not right about this doll.

The story was way too similar to Night of the living dummy 1 and even the ending, though more benign, was a rip-off from the first book.

My favorite book is Night of the Living Dummy 2 by R.L. Stine. He also writes the awesome books of the Goosebumps series, which as you know are mysteries and fiction. I like the writer's style because he writes scary stories that are sometimes funny. The main characters are cool, too, like Slappy, Amy Kramer, and their mom and dad. Their family is doing sharing night and Amy does a ventriloquist act and her dummy's head falls off and her brother starts laughing like an idiot. If you want to find out what happens to Slappy then read the book and find out. I recommend this book to people who like mysteries that give you twists and turns and scare people. I also like this book because Slappy never stops trying to make people his slave.

Lindy and her sister Kris discover an old dummy in a dumpster walking home one day. The dummy is in perfectly good shape and they can't understand why somebody threw the dummy away. Lindy decides to keep it so she names it Slappy. Lindy tries Slappy out on two of the kids her and Kris babysit. Slappy is an instant success. Kris becomes extremly jealous so Lindy decides to keep him. Lindy and Kris's dad buys Kris a dummy of her own which upsets Lindy causing her to play a mean practical joke on Kris. But soon after Kris gets her dummy, strange things start happening. No way it could be Mr. Wood (Kris' dummy) right?

Two girls find a dummy in the garbag.He's a living breathing dummy.He's is wearing a tux. One girl sayes strang words that brings the dummys to life.I like this book because it had good describing words.