Why I Loved - And Still Love - R.L. Stine

My latest issue of Newsweek magazine came yesterday. Tradition versus ideology continues my subscription; I've been a subscriber for nearly 15 years and I've spent the last several swearing that this was the time to cancel. I hate the editorial changes, the layout changes (where's my Periscope?) and the blatant liberal bent that I perceive.

But this week's issue had a redeeming article: one on the 20th anniversary of author R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series. Boy, did that bring back memories!

I'm a child of the 80s and 90s. I was born at the tail end of the Carter presidency, raised during Reaganomics and the end of the Cold War, and finished college just months after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. That should give you some historical perspective on my upbringing.

On the personal side, I was the only child of a self-employed grocer and a stay at home mom. Only, in those days, women like my mom simply called themselves housewives. That should help you to understand my personal upbringing.

Now for a geography lesson: I grew up in a rural area of Pennsylvania, in a town that had about 200 residents, all of whom knew my dad and his family. All. Big fish, little pond. If I sneezed, someone from down the road - we didn't have blocks - called to say God bless you. On their rotary phone. The street where I grew up didn't get wired for cable television service until long after I was gone. TV and phone in a child's bedroom? Heck no! Video games? Snort!

Why am I telling you all of this?

Well, because I'm a reader. Shocker, I know. But the bigger point is that I've been a reader all of my life. My mom homeschooled long before it was fashionable, albeit only when I was between the ages of 2 and 6. I entered kindergarten knowing how to write in cursive, recite my times tables through 9 and reading books by Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume. In KINDERGARTEN. Yes, I spent the first three years of school getting in trouble daily because, bluntly, I wasn't learning anything my mom hadn't already taught me and that meant getting in trouble every.single.damn.day.

But my escape was always reading. I've already moved several hundred books from my mother's home in PA to my home in TX for my toddlers to read. More than a thousand more await transporting, as my children become old enough to read them. Complete sets of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, American Girl series, the Babysitter's Club...and R.L. Stine.

Truthfully, I was a bit too old for Goosebumps by the time it came out in 1992. In fact, I was hooked on Stine's Fear Street series. But my love of his twisted stories led me to acquire and read and enjoy Goosebumps titles as well.

This week's Newsweek article celebrates the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Goosebumps book. Other than making me feel a *bit* old, it also made me smile in fond remembrance of reading those and other books from Stine and contemporaries like Christopher Pike. I went on to love Stephen King - still do, of course. And in many ways, the improbabilities highlighted by those authors and the sharp twists at the end have greatly influenced my own writing.

Have you read Hidden Intent? Didn't see that coming, did you? How about Dream Scream - bleak, bleak, hope, bleak, BLAM. A Strange Place - now there's a story in the style of Stine or Pike if I have one.

The fact is, I haven't really thought about R.L. Stine or other authors I read 20 years ago in about, oh, 15 years. But looking back, and seeing what I've written in the meantime, makes me smile over the books that I loved to read and the stories I now love writing.

How about you? What books or authors do you look back on from your childhood?