What do You think about The Beast From The East (2005)?
Ginger Wald and her younger twin brothers (Nat and Pat) go on a camping trip with their parents. It all starts off well but in typical Goosebumps fashion it all goes to hell pretty quickly and Ginger and her two brothers find themselves lost in the woods. The flora and fauna of this part of the woods is pretty bizarre- yellow grass, umbrella- like trees as tall as skyscrapers. This is when Ginger and her brothers meet the Beasts. They are large creatures with blue fur. They want the three kids to play their favourite game of ‘Tag, you’re it’ in which the winners get to live and the losers? Well, they get eaten. ‘The Beast from the East’ is not the best of the original Goosebumps series in terms of characters or plot and I believe that Stine could have done a bit better with the material. Having said this, reading ‘The Beast from the East’ is an ok read.
—John
"Quiet! Here comes the Beast from the East. Don't make a sound or he'll find you!"...This book is SO weird but very enjoyable. It starts out with one of the most amazing openings:When I was a really little girl, my mom would tuck me into bed at night. She would whisper, "Good night, Ginger. Good night. Don't let the bed bugs bite."I didn't know what bedbugs were. I pictured fat red bugs with big eyes and spidery legs, crawling under the sheet. Just thinking about them made me itchy all over.After Mom kissed me on the forehead and left, Dad would step into my room and sing to me. Very softly. The same song every night. "The Teddy Bears' Picnic."I don't know hwy he thought that song made a good lullaby. It was about going into the woods and finding hundreds and hundreds of bears.The song gave me the shivers. What were the bears eating at their picnic? Children?After Dad kissed me on the forehead and left the room, I'd be itching and shaking for hours.GREAT OPENING. Ginger, her parents, and her twin 10-year-old brothers Pat and Nat, go on a camping trip. But the kids get lost in the woods. Woods that don't really look familiar. Woods with strange creatures and sentient trees.The children meet some huge, 8-foot, blue-furred creatures. To the kids' shock, the creatures speak English. One, named Fleg, slaps Ginger on the shoulder. She's now The Beast From the East.The creatures have now tagged her. If she can't remain hidden and uncaptured by sunset - they will eat her. She is told that she and her brothers better get running!Caught in an alien, deadly game of Tag with rules Ginger can't understand, trapped in an exotic jungle - Ginger is fighting in a game of survival. Can she and her brothers win the game and save their lives?...Tl;dr - This is one of the more bizarre Stine books. But it is fun, weird, cool, and engaging. There are few things children like more than imagining crazy, weird-looking beasts and Stine even flirts with creating a strange language in this book - let's just say that by the end, your children will be able to count to five in ... whatever alien language the beasts speak! LOL So cool.
—Carmen
I just finished reading this book for the first time in well over 15 years. It was somehow both sillier and scarier than I remember. I haven't read too many Goosebumps books in a while, but this one seemed to stray from the typical structure. In a good way, to me. The whole book is set in one fairly isolated location, which actually isn't too typical of a Goosebumps book (even those set at camp or some far off location), and the way the story wraps up kind of left me still worried and tense. I realize that all Goosebumps books have a cliff-hanger type ending, but this seemed... less stinger and more "damn." It was such a fun read and I breezed through it pretty quickly. I hope others enjoy it as much as I did.
—Samuel Barrera
