Books in the news

R.L. Stine recently announced that he's letting a bunch of kids bully him into writing more Goosebumps books.

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For those of you who missed out on Goosebumps in your youth, this is a series of scary stories for the 7 to 12 year old set. Stine began writing them in 1992, a sweeter decade, when 7 to 12 year old kids still were kids, and didn't have makeup stores geared to their demographic in shopping malls. (Click here to check out that fun bit of trivia. Notice that the store's demographic actually begins with six year olds, meaning you can start using makeup a full year before you start reading Goosebumps.)

If Stine really wants to scare the kids, I recommend tossing out those tired old haunted castles and living corpses and focusing on what's really scary: bad hair days, unreliable meth dealers and STDs. Stuff that will really speak to his demographic.

Stine's new series is called Horrorland and the first four books (Revenge of the Living Dummy, Creep From the Deep, Monster Blood for Breakfast! and The Scream of the Haunted Mask ) are available now.