Stay Out of the Basement (Goosebumps #2) [Paperback]

R.L. Stine (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up

Dr. Brewer is doing a little plant-testing in his basement. Nothing to worry about. Harmless, he says. But Margaret and Casey Brewer are worried about their father. Especially when they...meet...some of the plants he is growing down there. Then they notice that their father is developing plant like tendencies. In fact, he is becoming distinctly weedy-and seedy. Is it just part of Dr. Brewer's 'harmless' experiment? Or does Dad have more than just a green thumb...?

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic (1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0439568455
• ISBN-13: 978-0439568456
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #274,611 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ooooooohhhhhhh, January 21, 2002

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Stay Out of the Basement (Goosebumps, No 2) (Paperback)

In Stay Out Of The Basement, a girl's scientific father has been acting very strangely lately. She thinks that he might be half man and half plant. He has been working on an experiment for a very long time. His daughter wants to know what he is up to,so she goes into the basement to the lab and discovers that her Father's clone,who is made of plants,trapped her real dad in the closet. She couldn't tell which was which. Will she destroy her own father? Read the book and find out.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I Will Never Look at Plants the Same Way Again!, November 30, 2001

By 

Lee DeWald (Nebraska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stay Out of the Basement (Goosebumps, No 2) (Paperback)

Although not as sharp as his first outing in the immensely popular "Goosebumps" series, "Stay Out of the Basement" is still quite the page-turner. R.L. Stine has the ability to grab his readers' attentions almost immediately, and that is one reason why his books are so adored by millions of kids everywhere.

This was one of the many "Goosebumps" books I got for Christmas in sixth or seventh grade. I had changed from "I'll never read those stupid books" to "I want them all!" I hadn't had most books for more than a couple of hours before they were already read. That's how hooked I was.

"Stay Out of the Basement" starts off with Margaret and Casey playing Frisbee. Their father, Dr. Brewer, is a scientist who always has to wear a baseball cap on his head; he does this because, as we later find out, one of his experiments go awry and the side-effects include having leaves growing out of his head instead of hair.

Things are going fine for Margaret and Casey until they start noticing things. Things like their father's insistent warnings to never go down into the basement; things like millions of bugs squirming around in his bed; things like their father scarfing down plant food and trying to make them eat it, too! As if having leaves sprouting up from under his cap wasn't weird enough!!

The climax works well in this book. It all comes down to the classic "Who do you trust?" saga. Towards the end, we discover that there are two Dr. Brewers; one is a real person, and one is a human-sized plant-like clone. Margaret has to decide who is lying and who is telling the truth when each Dr. Brewer claims to be her and Casey's father. I remember back when I first read it and not knowing who it was going to be. R.L. Stine had done such a wonderful job in writing the book that I didn't know who to trust, either.

In case you're a viewer who's never read the book, I won't spoil the ending for you. It's classic R.L. Stine, as everyone who has read his series will identify with. This is one "Goosebumps" book that will give you what it says.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top-Notch, Well-Crafted, "Goosebumps" Horror., September 7, 2010

By 

MyersFan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stay Out of the Basement (Goosebumps #2) (Paperback)

"Stay out of the Basement" is easily one of the five best installments in the original "Goosebumps" series, a true classic. This is an entry that is loaded with fear, suspense, twisted discoveries, and clever, surprising plot turns...back when R.L. Stine used a genuinely dark, uneasy feel instead of false alarms and explanation points. He doesn't restrain the dread and tension; they dominate the story. And Stine proves that he can make even plants scary.

In this paragraph, I'll just give a brief description. Margaret and Casey are siblings who witness an alarming change of behavior in their father, a scientist who's spending most of his time in the basement conducting weird experiments on plants. When the kids go to investigate, the plants move and breathe. And their father is getting stranger and stranger...

What's so great about this story? This isn't a "parents-don't-believe-us" entry because the father IS the one at the center of the horror. It's truly frightening because these two kids suddenly can't trust/believe a parent who's plunged into madness. In fact, one of the greatest aspects of the book is the kids' reactions and worries. There's one shocking discovery after another, like the disturbing scene when the father's baseball cap gets knocked off and his hair has been replaced with leaves. It sounds silly, but when you read it, you can't deny that the scene is creepy...and uncomfortable. And that's just the beginning of several eye-openers. There's the scene when he's forcing them to eat plant food, for instance, that is just plain freaky.

All of this crescendo into a heart-pounding climax with an incredibly sinister twist that sweeps you off your feet. What's not only scary are the life-threatening danger and the graphic descriptions, but the realization that the kids don't know what to believe anymore. And if that isn't enough, the book closes on a freakishly twisted ending that'll leave you wowed. The final twenty pages are among the very best in all of "Goosebumps".

There are other, smaller things that make this a scary, creepy book. The moving plants in the dark basement. The moaning faces that are half-plant. Here, Stine knows how to use quality descriptions to help propel the horror. He's even skilled in building the tension at a preferable pace where there are many increments of frightening revelations.

I love a "Goosebumps" book that constantly surprises as a sharp page-turner. Like I said, it's a series classic, back from when Stine was at the top of his creativity.