...take one of those abominable group selfies...
My younger son and I finally saw the "Goosebumps" movie over last weekend. His brother was going to a fun birthday party, so he was feeling terribly under-served and required some compensation. As far as I was concerned the movie was pleasant, but not particularly memorable. My son thought it was great and immediately wanted me to pledge to take him to the sequel, whenever it might be made and released.
While we own several "Goosebumps" books, and I have tried to convince my horror-loving children to read them on many occasions, the series has just not been very popular in the past at our house. I must confess that I was unaware what a publishing juggernaut the series has been...350 million copies have sold worldwide, and it is the second most popular children's series of all time, according to Wikipedia.
The movie's specific and rather dopey plot aside, "Goosebumps" the movie's charm is that it is a compendium of funny horror characters and therefore transcends the possible failings of each tale of scary zombies, creepy clowns, malicious lawn gnomes, deadly werewolves, etc., etc.
Being an 8 year old, my son was willing to attribute the original creation of many of these sorts of characters to R.L. Stine and the Goosebumps franchise. I reminded him that certainly the idea of werewolves, zombies, the abominable snowmen and ventriloquist dummies among many others predate Scholastic Publishing, some by tens if not hundreds of years.
And, on a more personal note, several of these characters appeared in my recent sculpture show "Popular Monsters," so perhaps I am particularly not willing to cede all credit to Mr. Stine.
Today's napkin is a reunion of sorts of characters who could appear in a best selling children's book series, in a major motion picture, or in my small, unsaleable sculptures.
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