Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Goosebumps Horror Land: Claws by R.L. Stine

ME! OW!!!

Mickey is put in charge of his vacationing neighbors' cat, Bella. His best friend, Amanda, comes along to help out. All they have to do is make sure Bella has enough to ear and doesn't destroy the furniture. Seems simple enough. But Bella escapes from the house and is hit by a truck. Mickey feels awful. What is he going to do? Amanda has an idea to replace the cat with a look-alike from the local pet store, Cat Heaven. They find a cat that looks exactly like Bella, but the clerk won't sell it to them, so they decide to steal it. Big mistake! These cats are more than what they seem to be...





This was another ARC I received from my friend Mandee at Scholastic Publisher's. My first thought when I saw the title of this book on the catalog I was sent, was the recollection of reading R.L. Stine when I was a child. It brought back some great memories and rekindled my love for the author's creative tales of scary stories for children.

Goosebumps Horror Land is a new collection of stories from R.L. Stine. In the beginning of the story there is The Storykeeper. He collects the stories of children from Horror Land and retells them for the reader's pleasure. I think that this is a unique way to inspire children's passion for all things horror.

Chapter one introduced the main characters and set the pace for the entire novel, in only a matter of two pages. The main characters are Mickey and his best friend Amanda. I believe that R.L. Stine has significantly portrayed the friendship of two young children in a very realistic way. This is something that will help any child reading this feel that it is relevant to themselves. Another thing that is great for the reader is at the end of each chapter they are all cliffhangers. This suspense keeps them eager to continue the story.

On the downside of the novel, I was confused at how Mickey supposedly always got along well with cats. It appeared, from my perspective, that he never once got along with any cat! The ending felt like the author simply ran out of energy. It just appeared to be too simplistic of an ending, almost as if his muse disappeared.

No comments:

Post a Comment