Why The Goosebumps Christmas Collection Succeeded In Its Scares

Readers beware… and stock up on your hot chocolate for story time.

Goosebumps is one of those nostalgic franchises that relies on kids as its primary target audience. And yes, some media should just be aimed at kids and not have a periphery demographic. The periphery demographic is a bonus, not the focus.

What I’ve noticed is that the older I get, the sillier most of the Goosebumps stories seem to be. Though when you read about the tight deadlines for each book and Scholastic filing suit about author R.L. Stine possibly using ghostwriters, the silliness makes sense. Submitting one novella a month would create the perfect scenario for creative burnout.

But then we have the Christmas short story collection, More & More & More Tales to Give You Goosebumps (Scholastic, 1997). Troy Steele reviewed it on his website, Blogger Beware, saying that the stories hold up to the test of time and legitimately terrify him. (Blogger Beware, alas, is down, but people have been archiving for the entries.) I have to agree — owning a copy after stupidly giving up my $5 copy and purchasing one later for $50 because the book is out of print, and prices have gone up for the remaining edition.