I loved Goosebumps as a kid, along with every other child my age. There was always a Goosebumps laying within arm's reach of me, even if it had to be hidden in my backpack. I was a member of the R.L. Stine fan club and got an autographed picture (which was banished to the back of my bookcase because Mr. Stine's gaze kind of freaked me out) and a t-shirt, which I proudly wore to meet Darth Vader with my dad and kid brother:And, of course, as I got older, my fascination with them faded away. I sold them to Bookman's, gave them to neighbor kids, passed them on to my brother, and generally forgot about them, 'til I started working in a public library, and they entered my consciousness again. But why reread them? They're not like other kid's books, like the one I recently finished (The Name of this Book is Secret), where an adult can enjoy them too. Or are they? When a couple of Goodreads friends, Caris and Ben, started talking about them, I decided to read one too.I picked Say Cheese and Die because I remember it being one of my favorites. I liked photography and the picture on the front, of a skeleton family enjoying a backyard barbeque, creeped me out in a fun way. I was kind of disappointed that the copy the library has is a different color, a much more modern style that, well, just doesn't make any sense. There's a camera, which is definitely not a Polaroid style camera, and some kind of deformed skull inside the lens? The heck does that mean? Seriously people. I yearn for the covers of my youth.ANYWAY, I was expecting it to be crap, like the one Caris reviewed, When The Ghost Dog Howls. But it is actually... not that bad. It's only the fourth book in the series (following Welcome to Dead House, Stay Out of the Basement, and Monster Blood), so it's not part of the mass-produced crap that came later. The plot follows four children, mainly Greg, who find an old camera in their town's haunted house. The camera, which is a Polaroid style and prints the photo immediately after it was taken, seems to predict an ominous future for the subject of all its photos. Greg is somewhat dimwitted and it takes him forever to catch on, but the plot actually moves at a fairly brisk pace once the book gets past its amazingly slow first five pages. Of course the dialogue is terrible and the characters are one-dimensional, but it's readable. It's not complete dreck and the plot doesn't meander or introduce too many characters to be confusing, which I remember from later Goosebumps books.They are definitely not books that are truly enjoyable at any age. I think they remain firmly within their audience of 8-12-year-olds. Something about these books is absolutely entrancing. I still remember thinking 12 was the best age ever, because that's when you get to have all these cool adventures.Now I'm actually kind of disappointing. I mean, I thought I was going to embarass my 10-year-old self for ever reading these books. I think I need to move on to the later stuff to find the really crappy books.
One Picture is really worth a thousand screams as the book cover says in the fourth installment of Goosebumps; Say Cheese and Die!. Four friends Greg, Shari, Doug (who goes by Bird) and Michael are hanging out one afternoon bored so they take a walk down to the old Coffman house a place that everybody knows is supposed to be haunted. Lots of creepy stories are told about it, but they soon find out that you shouldn't take what isn't yours nor should you go where you don't belong.Greg finds a camera inside of a drawer and takes it with him because it was hidden and he thinks nobody will miss it. He also has been wanting a new camera because his old one doesn't work right. However, he should have left it because the camera doesn't take normal pictures. He took picture of his friend Shari at her birthday party and she disappears less than five minutes later. She is gone for two whole days until finally Greg tears the picture he took of her, well was supposed to be her, up. She reappears out of the blue, the same way she left. That isn't the only thing that goes wrong with the pictures that come out. After realizing the camera is bad news Shari and Greg take it back since their two friends won't go back, scared of the house since the things that have been happening. While putting the camera back the two friends learn that the camera really is evil and are glad to get rid of it. The way the book ends though we know this is not the end of this tell, just the end for now...
What do You think about Say Cheese And Die! (2003)?
العدد الأول من سلسلة صرخة الرعب قصة مرعبة تذكرني بمرحلة المراهقة وخاصة انها تتناول القصص المرعبة بطريقة بسيطة وجميلة مناسبة لجميع الاعمار وغالبية أبطالها " أي السلسلة " هم من المراهقين والأطفال :) لكنها ممتعة ومسلية تدور أحداث القصة حول مجموعة من الاصدقاء الذين يشعرون بالملل فيقرورون ان يقتحموا بيتا مهجورا وهناك يعثروا على كاميرا ملعونة تلتقط صور للمستقبل وتكون غالبيتها مأساوية وتحدث واقعيا مع من تصوره وتبدأ الأحداث مشوقة ومرعبة في نفس الوقت وتنتهي نهاية مفتوحة كغالبية قصص الرعب ، وأن الرعب مازال مستمرا :) !؟
—امتياز
Three bored kids one summer day decide to investigate the Coffman House, an old house that several spooky stories revolve around and is the home of a strange, old man nicknamed "Spidey", because of his spider-like appearance. While searching the home, Greg Banks discovers a strange camera within a hidden compartment in a basement wall. Amused at the idea of having a camera Greg takes a picture of his friend Michael who is leaning on the stair railing. Suddenly, the railing gives way and Michael falls. Michael is found to have hurt his ankle upon landing. Greg discovers that the picture doesn't show Michael standing by the railing but instead falling. While the friends cannot come up with an explanation for the strange photo, all discussion ceases when footsteps are heard and the 3 friends flee the house taking the camera with them.As time goes on Greg takes a picture of his father's new car, but the picture depicts the car totally wrecked. Later, Greg takes a picture of his brother, Terry, who is in his room on his computer. But the picture shows him elsewhere, in a worried state, and in front of a house. The next day, Greg goes to his friend Bird's baseball game; a picture of Bird is taken and the picture depicts him lying on the ground with his neck bent in an unnatural angle. Bird dismisses this idea and even fakes the picture's scene coming true, in an attempt to show Greg and Shari that the camera is simply broken. However, while playing the game he is hit by an oncoming baseball and does in fact land in such a way that his neck is bent into an unnatural angle. Now, Greg is convinced that the camera is somehow responsible, but his friends are still unwilling to believe these ideas. It is at this point that Terry's picture comes true, as he comes up and claims that their father was in an accident, and the car is totally wrecked.Greg then has a nightmare of taking a picture of his family during a backyard barbecue but is horrified to see them as skeletons. This part mirrors the book's cover picture. Shari, still skeptical of the camera's powers, has Greg bring the camera to her birthday party and insists that he takes her picture. Greg reluctantly agrees but finds that when the picture develops, only the background has come out, Shari is nowhere to be seen. Not long afterwards, Shari disappears.
—Justin Padilla
Say Cheese and Die is certainly creepy, but it suffers from some weak writing choices. In this story, Greg and his friends find a mysterious camera hidden in an abandoned home. Greg figures out pretty quickly that the camera takes photos of horrible future events, but the rest of his friends refuse to believe him and want to use the camera at a party. When one of their closest friends disappears after her photo is taken, Greg tries to take the camera back to its hiding place. There he is cornered by the man who has been guarding the camera for years. In a fight to escape, the camera accidentally goes off and takes a photo of the man, resulting in him dying in fear over what it would show. Greg stashes the camera back in its hiding place, but the book ends with two new kids finding the evil device.The characters in this novel are dumb as empty film canisters, and the story itself is rather silly when you think about it. However, as a children’s horror book, as long as your suspension of disbelief is high, it can offer the reader a fair number of chills and gasps. The fact that terrible futures in the photos often did not happen instantaneously added to the suspense, though most of the time I was distracted by the desire to throttle the kids for all being so thoughtless.
—Maggie Gordon
