You Can't Scare Me!

## They're coming for you...

It's hard to tell if You Can't Scare Me! is great or terrible. Unlike most Goosebumps novels, it's not limited to a shallow horror yarn, but attempts to hit hard at bullying and the consequences thereof. The supernatural element are merely a rumor -- an old legend of murderous mud monsters -- not a threat.

Mostly.

[N.B. This review includes images, and was formatted for my site, dendrobibliography -- located here.]

The real horror of the book are comes from social pressures. Courtney King gets away with bullying young Eddie Campbell nearly every day of his life. She insults him; she scares him; she even spreads her bullying behaviors to others like wildfire. You Can't Scare Me! is about Eddie getting revenge. show more Or trying to, anyway. He and his friends hatch up plan after plan to scare Courtney, to get her back for all the misery she brings upon him, but all he ever gets for it is trouble.

Courtney, unfortunately, is afraid of nothing, and proud of it. Using the legend of the mud monsters -- that once a year on a moonless night (much like tonight), the muddy victims of a long-ago mudslide rise from the earth to seek out victims, dragging them back to their muddy graves -- Eddie plans to scare Courtney into thinking the mud monsters are coming for her.

It's an effective legend, but it comes all too late for this adventure. And despite the equally-effective message on bullying, it doesn't save the the story from feeling unfocused, not scary, and even downright boring. (Many later Goosebumps stories, like How I Learned to Fly, deal with bullying more effectively.) Nothing happens, and it's a shame, because the book's full of good ideas.

R.L. Stine's Goosebumps (1992–1997):
#14 The Werewolf of Fever Swamp | #16 One Day at HorrorLand show less

I really enjoyed this trip through my childhood nostalgia. The characters were great and there were some fun moments to watch.

So, my decision to read all of the Goosebumps books has brought me into contact with a great many sub-par entries within the series itself. This was one of them. While it wasn't as terrible as, say [b: Piano Lessons Can Be Murder|125560|Piano Lessons Can Be Murder (Goosebumps, #13)|R.L. Stine|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328868218s/125560.jpg|1733997] or [b: Why I'm Afraid of Bees|125583|Why I'm Afraid of Bees (Goosebumps, #17)|R.L. Stine|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328866712s/125583.jpg|120948] this one is still not terribly stellar. A bit surprising seeing how it is such an early Goosebump book.

Anyway, the plot.

Like most Goosebump books this one features an utterly despicable kid. In this case, it's the protagonist. show more Upset at how he's utterly incapable of doing anything useful or productive he vows to scare Courtney, a classmate of his. The book follows his failed attempts to do so, or to do much of anything, until the very end when MUD MONSTERS enter the picture.

That's right.

Mud monsters.

Yeah. Not one of the more memorable Goosebump books.

I wonder if Mud Monsters made it into the movie?

Thrills and chills... show less

I really enjoyed this trip through my childhood nostalgia. The characters were great and there were some fun moments to watch.

I really enjoyed this trip through my childhood nostalgia. The characters were great and there were some fun moments to watch.

Eddie and his friends are determined to scare Courtney because she shows them up constantly (especially Eddie). Every plan backfires, and finally Eddie comes up with something perfect- have her brother scare her with his mud monster costume. It might have been perfect, but the real mud monsters came and the people who end up the most scared are Eddie and his friends.

Cute beginning, overall an annoying, quick story. Didn't care for it, although the ending did leave me laughing.