Scares trigger young readers, not dark humor

No chemically balanced second grader would greet a children’s book titled “The Horror at Camp Jellyjam” without first consulting their physician. This is my thought process a decade-and-a-half after taking my first literary journey there. Author R.L. Stine’s story centered on Eliot and Wendy, siblings who accidentally end up staying at a sketchy sports summer camp. For fun on a road trip, Eliot and his older sister stay in a trailer attached to the car their parents are driving.

A bump in the road later, the hitch breaks, the trailer tumbles off a cliff and a camp counselor named Buddy finds the two near Camp Jellyjam. The pair eventually learn all the supervising counselors are being hypnotized by Buddy into a zombie-like state, one where they’re impenetrable and fixed with a Glasgow smile. Behind this yarn M. Night Shyamalan wish he whipped up is King Jellyjam, a purple blob of goo that sweats snails and enslaves campers. He’s the reason bad tykes start to disappear, never to return. The weak and naïve become his fine cuisine. Ew.

Nestled in bed, with only a lamp attached to the mattress frame lighting my room, I navigated the thirty-third tale in the “Goosebumps” series completely unaware of its harsh dedication to rape my eyes. Reading side effects included tummy aches, minor hemorrhaging of the soul and bloody nightmares lasting seven to 40 minutes. Nerve impulses may travel through the brain at 170 mph, but once “The Horror at Camp Jellyjam” cracked open, my consciousness spiraled into a tornado of terror. All this while my dad read to me.

As a kid, I was such a pussy. But what I lacked in cojones, I made up for in cognition. Those “Goosebumps” books did scare the bejesus out of me but I wasn’t the only one and knew why. I estimate half the people reading this column have turned the pages of such Stine hallmarks as “Stay Out of the Basement,” “The Werewolf of Fever Swamp,” “Egg Monsters from Mars” or “Say Cheese and Die!” They were irresistible if a trip to a clinic didn’t ruin the frights. It started with the cover art. I wasn’t aware before “Monster Blood II” a hamster could be so ferocious. Thank “The Girl Who Cried Monster’s” illustration for educating kiddies on what a pedophile looks like. And “Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes” merely reminded me how shrewd and territorial gnomes are.
Getting the heebie jeebies is a natural rite of passage when we’re young (in my case, younger). Our temptation to be frightened starts with discovery, of wanting to know the unknown. The turnout for a freak slasher film, regardless of whether moviegoers’ eyes are hidden behind their quivering fingers half the time, is at an all time high. Somehow, I was keenly aware of a shared desire between my classmates and I to risk peeing our pants over “Goosebumps” to get a sick rush. In retrospect, I must have gone through a couple pairs of khakis each week.

Roald Dahl was a real hero of mine. Dahl’s work served as the flipside of my early scholarly reading coin. The “Goosebumps” stories were intentionally written to send small readers to their local psychiatrists. But the great British novelist had conceived a way to scar bookworms for life without them realizing it until years after the fact. I would go to the library, much like his character Matilda in the book of the same name, and pour over the purity and strength of characters like Charlie (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”), James (“James and the Giant Peach”), George (“George’s Marvelous Medicine”), Sophie (“The BFG”) and especially Matilda herself. These were kids who were not only intelligent, but also highly aware of their surroundings. They didn’t color or cry. They were perfect. Dahl instilled a spirit I could identify with, this adventurous quality. As my nine and ten year-old friends were giddy to find out how R.L. Stine – easily the Stephen King of children’s literature – could pull the newest (and probably dead) rabbit out of his black hat, I became enamored by Dahl’s crafty protagonists.

Then it hit me; all these quirky personalities are the way they are because absolutely everything around them is cataclysmically demented. Matilda’s parents loathe her and the butch psychopath running the school she attends, Miss Trunchbull, tortures misbehaving tots. James also lives with guardians administering subdued child abuse. And Charlie, once the little sprite gets to the Chocolate Factory, gets to be in the presence of Willy Wonka, a real wackjob in Dahl’s vision. Don’t let Gene Wilder’s sunny take fool you. After I reread the original story it was clear Wonka was bonkers.

None of these sinister, underlying themes dawned on me ten years ago. Yet, how could they? Stine’s deliverance of legitimate goose bumps totally overshadowed Dahl’s mature subject matter. A mucus monster eating children and scrambled eggs from outer space are inherently alarming to the young and vulnerable. Children realizing what is possible within themselves as a result of overcoming fantastical – in the imaginations of thrill-seeking kids, reasonable –  hurdles, isn’t. Avid readers of the elementary level deserve all the credit in the world. They are at once happily ignorant of social issues and surprisingly capable of handling such occasional wickedness. Their receptions confirm the things going bump in the night stay with us more readily than the misunderstood utopia of a real world gone mad.

Greg O’Neil can be contacted at goneil@keeneequinox.com.