Night of the Living Dummy (Goosebumps, No 7) [Paperback]

R. L. Stine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1993 | Age Level: 8 and up | Series: Goosebumps (Book 7)

The author of Welcome to the Dead House and Stay Out of the Basement thrills readers with the story of a ventriloquist's dummy with a mind of its own.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

R.L. Stine is the creator of the monstrously successful Goosebumps series, which has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide in thirty-two languages! He lives in New York with his wife, Jane, and Minnie, his King Charles spaniel. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Paperback: 10 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic (May 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0590466178
• ISBN-13: 978-0590466172
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #550,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

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

By 

Hancock the Superb "Chris S." (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night of the Living Dummy (Goosebumps Series) (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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars which dummy, August 23, 2003

By 

"1rakestraw" (chester/VA usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night of the Living Dummy (Goosebumps, No 7) (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.....

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creepy!, January 12, 2007

By 

Amy Graham (Scottsdale, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Night of the Living Dummy (Goosebumps Series) (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.