The Horror At Camp Jellyjam (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
"And what about Mom and Dad?" I demanded. "They couldn't have driven very far before they realized the trailer had come loose. Why haven't they found us? Why hasn't the camp found them?"Elliot shrugged. "Beats me," he replied casually. He dodged past me and started to the door. "Wendy, you're just unhappy because you stink at sports. But I'm having a great time here. Don't mess it up for me - okay?"R.L. Stine must have been on some serious substances in 1995 because this book is flippin' insane. The ending is so bizarre and so weird and so disturbing I am unsure whether there is a kid in existence who could take this seriously.The book starts out shakily. Wendy (12) and her brother Elliot (11) are on a road trip with their parents. They go into the trailer their parents are hauling behind their car to play. The trailer gets separated from the car and the kids roll downhill only to open the door and find themselves in the middle of a sports camp called King Jellyjam's. o.O A camp counselor with the dubious name of "Buddy" offers to let them stay at camp. The kids go off with a strange man named Buddy, into the woods. o.OThe camp is loaded with kids and huge sports complexes. Everyone is very competitive and serious about winning. Every time you win at a sport, you are awarded with a gold coin with the image of a purple blob - King Jellyjam - stamped into it. If you get six coins you get to walk the Winners' Walk, which is a huge honor.Wendy and Elliot - seemingly unperturbed that they are separated from their likely frantic parents - start entering swim races and ping-pong tournaments. The highly competitive Elliot thinks he's in heaven. After a few competitions, Wendy finally remembers she has a set of parents and gets the bright idea to call home. She has to find a pay phone because, hey, this is 1995. However - get this - she gets distracted from calling her parents after locating said payphone by her dorm-mates and forgets to call home. The mind boggles.When she finally picks up the thread again, 8 chapters later, she realizes the phones are rigged so that no one can make outgoing calls. Okay, that was scary, I have to admit.Wendy, who is not as athletically-inclined as her brother, has noticed some strange(r) things about camp. Like the small earthquakes that happen multiple times a day. And the fact that everyone who has walked the Winners' Walk has mysteriously vanished, never to be seen again. And she sees the counselors hurrying to some unknown meeting place late at night when all the campers are in bed.Okay, here is what's going on: (view spoiler)[A giant purple blob with a gold crown on its head is living underground. Is it a demon? An alien? Unknown. The children who have won six competitions - the "Winners" - have the dubious honor of scrubbing the purple blob, who stinks really, really badly. It hates its own stench, apparently, and forces the "strongest kids" who have proven themselves by winning at sports (!?!?!!?) to scrub him day and night. The exhausted overworked children are being held prisoner and forced to do slave labor underground. The counselors are hypnotized (?) to worship the giant purple thing. Unknown as to how the purple thing did this. Unknown as to why he can't hypnotize the children.Also, he sweats snails. Yes, snails are popping out of his body at a rapid rate. Apparently snails' origins are the underground secretions of a giant purple monster. o.OWhere is the camp getting these children? Wouldn't people notice tons of missing kids? Who is funding the amazing sports arenas at the camp and the tons of food consumed by the children and counselors? Never mind. Things get even weirder. Do you know how the beast dies?!?! Do you!?!?! Wendy tells everyone to lie flat on the floor. The fat blobby thing is unable to pick them up with its chubby fingers and once it stops being constantly washed it suffocates to death on its own stench. Yes. You read that right. o.O This book has WTF? written all over it. I can't believe anyone would believe children would want to read this garbage. It's fucking insulting to children's intelligence. (hide spoiler)]
The book that I read today was about a brother and sister named Wendy and Elliot. One day, their parents and them where going on a road trip for vacation. Elliot gets bored in the car, so he asks his dad if Wendy and himself can go in the trailer that the car pulls. Their mom thought it was dangerous, but their dad let them go anyway. As they where in the trailer, the car went up a steep hill and the trailer got loose. The trailer went down the hill until it came to a sudden stop. A strange smiling man opened the trailer door. The man was a counselor, that was named buddy, at a camp and told the two siblings to come to the camp. Wendy thought it was a bad idea, but she didn't want to abandon he little brother that went with the strange man, so she went anyway. The camp was called, camp jellyjam and for some reason, everyone was smiling. As time passed, things started getting weirder and weirder. First, when Wendy was playing baseball, she accidentally hit buddy in the ribs with the base ball bat. As the bat hit his ribs, it made a CRACK sound. The strange thing was, he didn't even react to the hit. Second, the ground started to shake twice a day. Third, none of the phones in the camp works, so the two siblings can't call their parents. Fourth, a camper gets tokens if they win tournaments in sports. If the campers reach up to 6 tokens, they go to the winners round. The strange thing is, the campers never come back. When Wendy found out why the ground shook and why the campers disappeared, she and her brother wanted to leave. In the camp's cellar, a huge animal was in there. The campers that disappeared had to wash it daily or they will get eaten. Wendy and he brother told the campers to run. When they ran away, the monster tried to get them, but then fell over and turned into a liquid. Their parents found Wendy and Elliot, then safely resumed their road trip. The end
What do You think about The Horror At Camp Jellyjam (2003)?
This is the first Goosebumps I read in over 10 years, and I am reminded of how one-dimensional the characters and how cringe-worthy the dialogues are.Wendy and Elliot talk their parents into letting them ride in the trailer during a ride to camp, and somehow the trailer becomes unhitched. They roll down a hill and land by Camp Jellyjam where instead of being panicked and checking for injuries or trauma and making sure to contact their parents and the authorities, the kids immediately join sports events.Whut.If the vehicle I rode in fell into a ditch, the last thing I would want to do is go for a leisurely dip in a pool.And the destruction of the King Jellyjam was an anticlimactic letdown. I read so fast that I had to backtrack and make sure that that was it.
—Sami C
*Since this book only took a mere hour to read, I will not be doing my Pre-Reading, Just Startin' Out, Mid-way, etc. Probably this should be expected for all children's books, for future reference.I wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped I would be with my first Goosebumps of the millennium. Considering I hadn't read one in nearly two decades, I thought I'd give Horrors at Camp Jellyjam a try. It wasn't one of those that I'd read earlier and looked fairly interesting. I have to admit, I was surprised at the end. I'd hardly expected the counselors were using the campers as slaves for a giant slimy sponge thing. I did anticipate a few of them being eaten, however.
—Ashley
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Goosebumps. The Horror at Camp Jellyjam was my favorite. One summer my friends and I made our own King Jellyjam’s Sports Camp. We would spend all day playing sports and trying our hardest to win. Only The Best. We even made King coins.I was super excited to re-read this one again as an adult. I probably shouldn’t have done it. It was a fun read but it just wasn’t the same as when I was a kid. I think that is why I’m only giving it three stars. There was nothing wrong with it, it just didn’t have the same, I don’t know, magic I guess. Something was missing. Oh well, I still enjoyed it.Note: This is an older review. So I don’t feel like I can get more into what I liked and disliked about it. Maybe someday I will re-read The Horror at Camp Jellyjam and do another review. Better reviews (hopefully) in the future.https://thebookhoarderblog.wordpress....
—Raye
