Dear Ms Zhrihen,
Reader’s Journal #1: Fear compiled by R. L. Stine
August 29, 2011
Dear Mrs. Zhrihen,
I would like to tell you about a book I read: Fear compiled by R.L. Stine. This book is a collection of thirteen short stories by authors of suspense and horror. R.L. Stine is the author of the "Goosebumps" series. Each story is written by a different author.
One story is titled “Welcome to the Club”, by R. L. Stine. It’s about a boy named JJ who worked as a waiter who moved from Texas to a new town. He is invited to join a club that go by the name “Killers”. The initiation is to kill someone with a gun. What the club members don’t say is that the gun is loaded with blanks. JJ takes the gun and goes to kill his boss, Florian. That’s when the characters start lying and kidding and double crossing each other until the end when it really gets scary. My favorite passage from the story was this on pages eighteen and nineteen:
“JJ shook his head. “You understand me, right? You all have to take a bullet. I can’t trust you. No way. I can’t take a chance.”
He aimed the pistol at Bony. His arm tensed.
Maria let out a scream.
Bony jumped at JJ. He made a wild grab for the gun.
JJ swiped it out if Bony’s reach – and fired.
POP.”
This passage is important because it’s where the twists in the story start happening.
Another story in the book that I liked was “The Perfects” by Jennifer Allison. It’s a story about a family who moves Entrails, Michigan. The main character is a girl named Hannah. She babysits for a family named the Perfects on Halloween night. The children are very strange. They like to watch films of surgical procedures. Hannah decides to explore the Perfects’ house. While she is exploring, she gets trapped in the basement and realizes she’s not the first babysitter to go down there. The whole tone of the story is pretty creepy. On page seventy nine there is an important passage:
“ “Help yourself to anything you’d like in the kitchen, Hannah,” said Mrs. Perfect, opening the refrigerator door to reveal a sparse collection of yogurts and a plate littered with the bones of a small animal that didn’t look like anything I had ever eaten before.
“And what about the baby?” I asked. “What’s her schedule?”
Mrs. Perfect frowned. “What baby?””
I like this passage because it makes the story more mysterious.
I would rate the book a five star book because it has lot of mystery, horror, and action and those are things I like in a story. Not boring stuff.
I hope you read the book and like it.
Sincerely,
Michael Heskiel
