R L Stine Goosebumps Series English Language Essay

There are other books in a series like the Goosebumps by R. L. Stine but I am only going to focus on the Goosebumps Series 2000 books by R. L. Stine. I have chosen the following three books to use as examples for my essay; Cry of the Cat 1998, Scream School 1999, and Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls 1998. This book series is meant to be scarier than the original Goosebumps series. The books range from 117 to 121 pages, which accounts for why children find them so easy to read through in a matter of time. This essay will analyze what it is about these texts that would make a young person want to read more. It will also investigate what adults have to say about these books. These books have a long history and there are many people have read them and are knowledgeable about them. There is so much merchandise on the market that is promoting the new stories, movies and shows for the children of today.

The child can find a list of more book titles in the back or front of the current book. This way they can figure out what they have and have not read and go get the books they may be interested in. Each youngster that is reading the book has the opportunity to join the Goosebumps Fan club 2000. For the price of $13.95 Canadian plus $2.00 shipping and handling a youngster can receive a welcome letter, notepad, scary poster, baseball cap, to-die-for decal, spooky stickers, and four different colour postcards to send to friends, 5 issues of the newsletter. This allows the youngster to feel like they belong to an exciting group.

The merchandise for Goosebumps is aplenty and comes in many different forms. There was a Goosebumps television show on YTV when I was younger. This is a huge franchise, with a show that is going to be airing on The Hub network. The show will be R. L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour. It is an all-new horror series for children that are going to be like the Goosebumps shows I grew up watching. There have also been Goosebumps movies made for children. The website that scholastic books has for children to visit is http://www.scholastic.com/goosebumps/. It gives the children the chance to be updated on what is currently happening with the series. This site contains information about the show and books Goosebumps. The author has his own website http://www.rlstine.com that contains games, trivia, and so on.

The sources of its appeals to young readers are that it keeps them entertained so they can learn the value of reading. The book covers have brightly coloured graphics that depict the monster in the book that the child will be reading about. Each chapter has a cliffhanger that keeps the children flipping the pages to find out what is going to happen next. Easy to read so that the child does not get to upset and give up the chore of learning to read. Short books make for the attention span of the youth to be kept on the book long enough for them to finish it and want to read another one. The ability for them to read on their own gives them self-confidence and self esteem.

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Placing the text in the context of a young person’s media world means that the ending of the book is mostly a happy one but with usually a strange twist for the main characters. Most of the last chapter is either talking about the sun shining brightly when they go outside or when the clouds clear in the end. The ending work out for everyone involved but not always in the way the reader would expect. In Cry of the Cat, they end up turning into cats. In the Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls, they end up switching bodies. Scream School they end up being real people and not ghosts or ghouls it was all a film trick.

Each book has big lettering so that children can see and understand the words easier. Most of the sentences contained in the book are short easy to read sentences. Each of the containing sentences has small familiar words that can be easily pronounced. At the ending of each book is a preview of the next book in the series to keep the youth interested in the book and thinking about the next one that will be coming out soon. The book includes a special contest with a ballot in the back of the book to be sent in.

An excerpt from the book Cry of the Cat: Chapter 14, page 60 “At play rehearsal that afternoon, I felt a little better. I didn’t have my usual energy. But at least I didn’t feel so shaky and weird. I just need a good night’s sleep, I decided. I need a night without a mysterious cat climbing over my face. I made my way down the rows of auditorium seats and climbed onto the stage. Ryan and Freddy were arm wrestling beside the royal throne in the centre of the stage. Freddy was so much bigger than Ryan, he barely had to strain. Ryan’s face was bright red and twisted in pain as Freddy pushed his arm down.” This section taken from the book is a prime example of what I have discussing in my essay about the simple reading styles. The sentence structure is not proper and does not teach good writing skills. The writing is not very elegant or graceful but it is interesting to for the child reader.

Many parents had reservations when Goosebumps started showing up on the reading scene. They are more often funny and usually have successful conclusions. They can also contain violence and can be really frightening. The books are aimed at the second-to-sixth graders readers. I enjoyed reading them as a child and even reading them again as an adult. They are easy to read and I can get through one book very quickly. My response as an adult to this books are that they to have some controversy in terms of them being harmful and substandard for the youth but that is why the children will only enjoy reading them more. I believe less and less children are reading then they used to since there are video games, television and the computer to be entertained with. It they are reading then it needs to be greatly encouraged no matter what they are reading. I believe that once the subject matter is mostly the same and it tends to get boring they will move on to more difficult reading. It is first important to cultivate a love of reading to be able to enjoy the books fully. That is what these reading are providing to that extent. Everyone needs a type of book that they can enjoy to be able to escape the real world and be able to fantasize about another world they are reading about in the books. They are a useful tool to help the child to enjoy reading books that could most likely lead them to read more difficult books in the future. As long as the youth are reading this is a really good thing. It all starts out small to educate the youth of today to enjoy reading.

R. L. Stine has the ability in the way he writes to understand how the way children talk and behave such as in the terms of totally awesome, cool and trying to be cool to each other. It is interesting but not everyone can have this capability to understand this. This is one of the main reason so many children love his books, and so many teachers and parents have such a diverse outlook. It is not intellectual literature but it is at least very important that Stine has them reading on their own, especially the boys. Children should be reading good material but they have to start somewhere when they begin to read longer books. Teachers have been forcing children to read material they did not like or have difficulty reading since the beginnings of the classroom. They need to lead students to other reading materials than the flashcards, schoolbooks or worksheets. The brilliance of these books as well as with most popular literature is that it endorse s what people like to hear and also need to hear. What is interestingly significant and moral at this time may be material of social interactions that is happening in our culture currently. I believe we can gain plenty of knowledge about what is widely captivated the children as being just for fun. It is interesting to note what these books are influencing children on how they should to be in books and what the world at large is all about. Just for fun means turning of your critical intelligence and bypassing all your censors to get inside your brain.

The books contain some very irrefutably simplistic characterization and writing. They do contain some very imaginative circumstances. Many themes in the books have been borrowed from the adult novels and films. The children in the book handle the situations in an interesting way of thoughtfully in the fashion of that of a child. In some instances, these books induce all types of clever psychological subject matter but never directly; these books tend to have the understatement of fairy tales. These books are not the usual formulated material you would normally find. The main characters are sometimes the underdogs who are victorious, underdogs who suffer defeat and sometimes underdogs who prevail by turning into the monsters they were trying to escape. These are very good lessons for children that you cannot always win but even if you do win it may not be in the manner you had hoped. I cannot say that all of the Goosebumps I have read are likewise as appealing but many of them have been very much so.

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I believe everyone needs to start somewhere so they can find their own individual love of reading. As a child, we all read things our parents may not have approved of but as youth, that is what we do. The children are able to bond over the reading material and share the books between one another. This allows the ability to allow them to socialize and learn more about what each child believe to be the opinion or take they had on the book. They may be able to find some underlying contexts if they are more adept at reading and comprehension. The children can teach each other and give themselves more confidence. By doing this they can go on to read other more interesting literature that can be of more value to teach them more about the way of life. These books are not great literature but they the ability of a book to interest an inexperienced young reader to grasp the concepts of language and reading. Books that children find interesting but adults find it hard to support have always been ingredient of every childhood culture. Children want to conform to what is current in their lives. Every adult I knew when I was younger condemned comic books as being character damaging. Therefore, every child wanted to read them. We wanted to read them because adults forbade them; consequently, they were children private preserve.