I’ve loved reading since I was a kid, and that means I’ve built up a lot of favourite books over the years. I still own most of them, so I’m going to start sharing some of my childhood favourites and have a little chat about what I liked about them, which books in particular were my favourite, and if I still like them today. The first books I’m going to focus on are the Give Yourself Goosebumps books by R. L. Stine.
Give Yourself Goosebumps by R. L. Stine
Give Yourself Goosebumps is a variation of R. L. Stine’s regular Goosebumps books, which are a series of short horror novels for children. The Give Yourself Goosebumps series differs because instead of just reading the novel, they’re a series of “choose your own adventure” novels: they tell a story, but at the end of each page, you get to decide what happens next to turning to a particular page and continuing the adventure.
(I realise now that this post might have been great to publish on Halloween, but I’m now writing it 3 days after… but I don’t do conventional.)
Why I loved the Give Yourself Goosebumps books
My sister and I have always loved the “choose your own adventure” style. Aside from the Goosebumps books, we also read Doctor Who ones, and various other ones we could get our hands on.
We loved them so much that we’d even regularly attempt to write our own. Even before we had a computer, we’d get a blank notebook, number every single page by hand, and then write it that way. It become much easier to do it once we had a computer. (We even wrote them using PowerPoint, and there would be links to click to the next slide, depending on which choice you wanted to pick.)
I’m not particularly sure what drove us to love reading this style of fiction so much. Maybe we read so much regular fiction that this was a fresh new style? I don’t know.
All I know is that we could sit there for hours, reading them to each other and working together to decide which way the story would progress. Then when we finished, we’d go right back to the beginning and start all over again, choosing all the options we didn’t pick first time.
They gave us hours of easy entertainment – and considering these books were £3 when we were kids, pretty cheap entertainment, too!
My favourite books from the Give Yourself Goosebumps series
Even though we owned quite a few, we had our favourites that we’d read over and over again. It was probably because they were the first ones we owned, so they were the most memorable. They still are! These three books are the ones that are still my favourites from the Give Yourself Goosebumps series, and I still remember almost everything about them.
#3: Trapped at Bat Wing Hall
I’ll start with my third favourite and work my way down to the solid #1 spot. At number 3 is Trapped in Bat Wing Hall (which also happens to be number 3 in the Give Yourself Goosebumps series).
Being the new kid in school is no picnic. At your old school you had tons of friends, but now you don’t even have one. Then you meet Nick. He asks you to join the Horror Club. The Horror Club meets in an old mansion known as Bat Wing Hall. It’s dark. It’s spooky. And it’s where your adventure begins.
The members of the Horror Club are going on a scavenger hunt. If you join the red team, you find out the truth about your new friends–they’re actually monsters! One is a green-skinned reptile. Another is a hulking giant! If you join them blue team, you get turned into a furry-faced vampire bat!
Looking at this now, I actually can’t remember a great deal about it. I just remember specific bits, and I also remember really liking it when my sister and I read it together. I’m pretty sure there’s an ancient video somewhere of my sister reading this with all sorts of funny voices for the characters. I really need to try and find it!
#2: Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter
Next is Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter, which is number 6 in the series. I remember every detail of this like I only read it yesterday! This was one that we read over and over again, which is most likely why I remember it so well.
Your aunt and uncle told you to stay out of their basement. So, of course, you check it out. That’s where you find the dusty old refrigerator. In the fridge there are two containers. One is filled with purple goop. It smells just like a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. The other holds a piece of chocolate cake. Your stomach is growling.
If you eat the purple goop, you start shrinking. Pretty soon you’re battling it out with a gigantic monster – a mouse! If you choose the cake, you grow into a tall giant. Now you’re trying to escape the police, who are convinced you’re a mutant alien!
I had a hard time choosing which one should be my #1 favourite between this and the next one on the list. I’d say they’re maybe on par with each other. I loved the variation of the story in this one, depending on which options you chose.
I bet there are probably pages in this one that I’ve never read, which I find really funny – there are so many paths you can take that there are unlimited combinations, and I’m sure I haven’t explored them all. But as much as I could potentially read every page in order to see if there are ones I don’t remember, it feels wrong. I just can’t do it!
#1: Escape From the Carnival of Horrors
The final one, and my number one favourite (possibly tied with the one above), is Escape From the Carnival of Horrors. It’s the first book in this whole Give Yourself Goosebumps series, and I think I’ve read it more times than I can count.
Late on night you and your friends visit the old fairgrounds. They’re putting up rides and booths for the annual carnival. But this year things look really different. Really odd. Really scary.
The place is lit up by a hundred fiery torches. And spooky music is coming from the main tent. Then you meet Big Al, the creepy carnival manager He’s invited you in to test some of the rides.
Will you brave the terrifying Supersonic Space Coaster Risk the horrors of the Reptile Petting Zoo? Slice through the oily waters of Booger Bog? Or confront the evil Snake Lady?
This one was so much fun because of how different the story could be every time we read it. The book starts with a few friends stumbling across a carnival, and they’re daring each other to sneak inside. Once they’re inside, the reader is given a choice: to head towards towering rides and rollercoasters, or head towards the side stalls and minigames. Each decision takes you on a completely different turn, from funny to downright creepy.
There are a lot of directions in this story that I remember really well, and others that I’ve probably completely forgotten about. I read it again fairly recently and I turned down paths that I didn’t know existed, even though I’ve read it so many times. That’s exactly what I love so much about these books – you can read them over and over, and still get a unique reading experience every single time!
(Interestingly, this was followed up by the 22nd book in the series which was called Return to the Carnival of Horrors, but I’m not sure if I ever read that one because I have absolutely no recollection of it.)
In the picture above, you can see all of the books I still own today. Some of them are so faded after years of being on a bookshelf, and I just love how old and battered some of them look. These are the kind of books that I’ll keep forever, because I’ll just never be able to get rid of them. Even as an adult, they’re still so much fun to read!
Did you read Gosoebumps or Give Yourself Goosebumps as a kid? Which ones were your favourites?
