You Can’t Scare Me by R. L. Stine Review

You Can’t Scare Me by R. L. Stine is the story about four school kids – Eddie, Hat, Charlene and Molly – who take it as their mission to scare Courtney, who seems to be the bravest girl in their class. On a field trip Courtney makes fun of Eddie, first with a green snake then with a couple of Bumblebees. Eddie, who is much humiliated, decides to take revenge on Courtney. With his other friends he makes elaborate plans to frighten Courtney.

Courtney, as they soon find out, is not someone to be terrified easily. They put a rubber snake into her lunch bag and end up instead scaring the living daylight out of their teacher. With great difficulties they are able to acquire a living tarantula, but even that plan backfired. They try to scare Courtney with Molly’s dog Buttercup. That too fails. Eddie ends up being chased by Courtney’s own dog and Buttercup, to their surprise, becomes absolutely tame before Courtney. Perhaps, it is impossible to spook Courtney – they concluded. Then a new opportunity presents itself quite unexpectedly. One day Courtney confesses in the class that she believes that monsters exist. Eddie is overjoyed. He colludes with his older brother Kevin to hatch a terrible plot – to raise the Mud Monsters.

You Can’t Scare Me by R. L. Stine is a short horror novel for young readers. Unlike Stephen King novels that are lengthy and usually have complicated plots, the Goosebumps books are brief and pretty straight forward. There is limited number of characters so it is easy to track them. They are the kind of fast paced stories with unexpected twists that make you delay your lunch just a bit. You Can’t Scare Me by R. L. Stine which is the 15^th Book in Goosebumps horrors, is particularly suitable for children because of its simplicity.

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