Elizabeth Erwin

With genuinely scary jump scares, bloody kill sequences that leave an impression, and a pitch perfect 90s soundtrack, Fear Street: 1994, the first of three book-to-film adaptations dropping on Netflix today, more than lives up to the hype. When news broke that this beloved series was being adapted, we knew that we wanted to go back and revisit a couple of books in the series. And so, this week’s hair raising reads are 1989’s The New Girl and 1991’s Lights Out. A time capsule of questionable sexual politics, these books helped to establish a template of horror storytelling that authors still follow today. On this podcast, we talk blood, guts, and spoilers so listener discretion is advised.

Recommended Reading:

Coppell, Vicki. “The ‘Goosebumps’ in Goosebumps: Impositions and R. L. Stine.” Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature 8.2 (1998): 5-15.

Jones, Patrick. “Nothing to Fear: R. L. Stine and Young Adult Paperback Thrillers.” Collection management 25.4 (2001): 3-23.

Lair, Mackenzie. “What’s so Scary about Fear Street? A Feminist Analysis of R. L. Stine’s Fear Street Series.” New Views on Gender 15 (2014): 11-15.

Nodelman, Perry. “Ordinary Monstrosity: The World of Goosebumps.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 22.3 (1997): 118-125.

Perry, Leslie Anne, and Rebecca P. Butler. “Are Goosebumps Books Real Literature?” Language Arts 74.6 (1997): 454-456.

Smith, Stacia Ann. The Exploration of Middle School Students’ Interests in and Attractions to the Writings of R. L. Stine. The Ohio State University, 1998.

Tanner, Nicole. “Thrills, Chills, and Controversy: The Success of R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps.” Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management 6 (Spring 2010): 1-13.

West, Diana. “The Horror of R. L. Stine.” American Educator 19.3 (1995): 39-41.

Lights Out is very hard to find, but you can get The New Girl from Amazon (ad):

And you can find the first four Fear Street novels in this collection: