R.L. Stein
I grew up in the 1990s and loved Goosebumps! As an adult I started to collect the original series for D and I to read… D is not a huge fan, yet! I actually still enjoy reading them myself and would love to have the complete set at some point.
When I was doing some research on how many Goosebumps books there are, I found a bunch of other R. L. Stein books for young readers. I had to get some of them for D and since I was trying to convince her to read goosebumps. It still has not worked as I hoped but she has LOVED these other books!
Garbage Pail Kids
There are currently three books in this series and D would love there to be a hundred more! She loves everything garbage pail kids…. I have her dad to thank for that though. He has his vintage cards from the 1980s and 1990s that he has looked through countless time with D. She even likes to tell me all about Wacky Jackie! When she received the first one of these books for her birthday, she could not put it down. She read it three or four times the first few weeks she had it and then decided she had to read it out loud to me while I was cooking so I could enjoy it too. I enjoyed it quite a bit! So, as a surprise I randomly bought her the other two in the series and she is still hooked!
The story is about 10 middle school kids who all live in one beat up house. They are silly, strange and gross to most people but they can’t help that, It’s all they know!
Definitely a 5 / 5 stars for us! I would say, 8 years and up for the reading level.
Rotten school
I happened upon one of these books at the library used book store and grabbed it on a whim. It is a bit easier to read then the Garbage Pail kids books and D finished it in about and hour. She did enjoy it and asked if we could get the rest of the series (which we are still working on, trying to wait till I have some extra charter funds!). These forth graders live in a boarding school and get into a lot of silly situations. It is definitely more of a comedy series then a horror series, making it perfect for silly kids! I would say 4/5 stars from us and reading age, 7 and up with 16 books in the series! Defiantly worth a grab if your kids are into silly books and like to laugh!
Give yourself Goosebumps
Maybe I missed this as a kid, but I was so excited to find the Give yourself goosebumps series! I am still trying to collect all 42 and 8 special editions… I am a long way away since I only have 14. As a kid, I loved to read “game books” and would have loved these!! Now, D does not like them since they are definitely in the horror category and not the comedy category, she prefers but, maybe just maybe one day she will be into them. In the meantime, I am enjoying figuring out all the possible endings!
These are out of print, but you can get some used copies on Amazon or in the Kindle store! These are a few of my favorite of the 50 that exist!
What about at your house?! Do you or your kids enjoy Goosebumps? Or scary books in general?