#Spooktober ‘Zombie Halloween-Goosebumps Most Wanted Special Edition #1’ by R.L Stine

About the book…

The infamous, Most Wanted Goosebumps characters are out on the loose and after you. Just in time for Halloween, a super special edition!

Kenny Manzetti was the new kid in town. His family moved back in to an old house to help take care of his grandfather. Everyone in his new neighborhood is obsessed with zombies–even Grandpa Mo. But then a new family moves in next door and there choice in furniture is…interesting.

Kenny is convinced that there is something strange about the new neighbors but his parents won’t listen to him. So Kenny and his friends go in for a closer look. A bad idea on any day but definitely the wrong choice around Halloween. Will Kenny survive long enough to go trick or treating?

With an extended page count this special edition is a scream!

Goosebumps is talked about in the same breath as Christopher Pike’s Point Horror, there is a wave of nostalgia and fondness that crashes over you, for certain generations this is their entry point into horror fiction. That it is still going and finding new ways to scare the youth of today is a wonderful thing.

Myself and my other half were stupidly excited to see that RL Stine is bringing back the ‘Garbage Pail Kids’…it brings back memories of queuing for the ice cream van, hoping that the bubble gum pack wouldn’t have a doubler!

Part of the fun of reading to your children is the chance to revisit old favourites such as R.L Stine and see how that distinctive style holds up as a grownup. So I requested this title from Netgalley,on my daughter’s behalf, but really it was my own!

And it just shows that where some authors are dialling it in and mass producing ghostwritten books, R.L Stine is the real deal. This is entry No 1 in a new series, special edition ‘Most Wanted’ and focuses on halloween with added zombies. The usual mix of horror and humour abound, the new kid in town and the ‘weird family next door,or are they?’ tropes in less expert hands could be seen as hackneyed but here they are wielded with scalpel precision.

Kenny and his family have the challenges of starting up a new phase of their life,he and his brother have moved into a possibly haunted house which is directly opposite a graveyard. With Halloween approaching, he decides that throwing a party to make friends would be a great idea. However, those who turn up are not on the VIP list…

It’s a great story, the way that kids often work through life changing events is often through distraction and books, through the narrative, RL Stine uses horror and humour to show resilience, growth and strength where children often feel powerless.

Both myself, a R.L Stine reader from too many years ago to admit and my 10 year old daughter found much to enjoy here.

About the author…

Robert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children’s literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series.

R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children’s author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold.

Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids’ Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA’s Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY.

Links-http://www.rlstine.com/ 

Twitter @RL_Stine @Scholastic @scholasticuk