Book Review by Grace Heine
Title: Welcome to Dead House
Written by: R.L. Stine
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: 1992
Paperback: 123 pages
“Josh and I hated our new house. Sure, it was big. It looked like a mansion compared to our old house. It was a tall redbrick house with a sloping black roof and rows of windows framed by black shutters… This house is creepy, I thought unhappily.” (page 1)
Any book I hate on page one doesn’t deserve to be finished.
Just saying.
No joke: I read the first page and slammed the book shut.
Why?
Adverbs.
Q: How many “ly”s does it take to write a Goosebumps book?
A: 359
Every page had at least two if not eight adverbs.
Dear R.L. Stine, please stop verbally explaining how the characters felt and instead subtly present their emotions.
The character’s (highly explained) emotions jumped around like Kangaroos on coffee.
One moment the kids are calm the next they’re yelling angerly.
(I could go on for another couple miles of blog post but I have other stuff to complain about)
#1. There’s no point to anything in the plot. The characters do stuff for no reason and it never gets explained.
#2. The ending is extremely unmoral. (I didn’t read that far but I did read a plot summary which discussed it.)
#3. It’s surprisingly violent and graphic. Um…. not sure what middle schooler wants to read about cannibalistic zombies or melting non-dead dead people or strange boys in the main girl’s bedroom ().
#4. The kids topple a huge tree.
So yeah……
Not quite sure who to recommend this book for other than people who don’t care about plot or character’s morals and just want to be weirded/grossed out while reading a middle grade horror book.
For More Information about the Book and Author Click: HERE (warning: some of the pictures on this site are disturbing)
Age Range: Future Sociopaths.
Cautions – *Contains Spoilers*
Violence: Kids push each other. Amanda dreams that she and her family are zombies and are having a dinner of human remains (described in discussing detail – I skim-read/skipped a lot of this part) Several people melt. A man has a flashlight melt into his head. A girl thanks Amanda for killing her.
Sensuality: None.
Profanity: None.
Other: People argue. The kids are disrespectful. The kids scare each other. The parents tied to a stake. As the Bensons are leaving town they see another family being shown Dead House BUT the Bensons just keep driving therefore condemning the other family to be murdered by the townspeople.
Personal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
Cleanness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
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