Goosebumps

Besides being the little bumps you get on your arms and legs when you are chilled or frightened, Goosebumps is a book series. It was once a popular horror storybook series specifically aimed at children ages 9 to 12. (Grades 3-8.) They are written by R.L. Stine and produced by Scholastic Books, one of the more “trusted” names the educational arena. Goosebumps as a television series tremained quite popular too and their are Goosebumps games, kids sleeping bags and toys galore. Being that the stories are scary, one will probably get goosebumps reading them, and by the way, another word for the goosebumps you get on your skin is "horripilation."

The creator of the books, R.L. Stine, says he believes his job is to “make kids laugh and give them the creeps.” He boasts that his work “has been called a literary training bra for Stephen King.” (King being a "great writer" of horror and suspense tales for adults.) But not everyone wants their kids reading horror stories. Some people want to ban Stine’s books from school libraries and classrooms.

Banning books is nothing new, and the argument against banning books is that this is AMerica, land of the free and freedom is important. There are always books that someone wants to ban. Just look at banned book lists. Classic reads like "Huckleberry Finn," “Bridge to Teribithia,” “Little Black Sambo” and even “the Holy Bible” have made the lists because someone somewhere objected for some reason.

As for Goosebumps, many parents and teachers have been known to comment that the goosebumps are positive horror books because they do not have graphic descriptions of murder and mayhem and they help get kids interested in reading. They are “easy to read stories about weird things that happen,” “just some ghosts, werewolves, or potions and the main character is alive in the end when in the final chapter everything is resolved.”

“Reading the books produces pleasurable anxiety,” said one teacher, “They are “an entertaining escape…the campfire type story that is meant to send chills down a child’s spine, make her scream and clutch her friend’s arm – and then laugh about it later as the kids scare themselves again.” She also commented that readers can differentiate between reality and fiction, “Children can reassure themselves that “it’s not happening to me, it’s happening to the character.”

Well, the book are still around, but not as popular any more and RL Stine is don with their production. He has now moved on to writing more “sophisticated horror” for more sophisticated audiences, after all, as Stine says, the Goosebumps series, really is “just a training bra.”

His readers are growing up. They are getting older and their expanding minds will probably have to find something more sophisticated and stimulating that such juvenile horripulation.