R.L. Stine Loves Scaring Kids

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Book Case
Episode Title: R.L. Stine Loves Scaring Kids
Hosts: Charlie Gibson and Kate Gibson
Guest: R.L. Stine
Release Date: October 30, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this Halloween-themed episode, Kate and Charlie Gibson host legendary children’s horror author R.L. Stine. The conversation explores how Stine’s Goosebumps and Fear Street series have become reading touchstones for kids, particularly those aged 7-14, at a time when national reading proficiency in middle schoolers is falling alarmingly low. The episode spans Stine's writing philosophy, his aversion to overt moral lessons, how he balances humor and horror for young readers, and the surprising optimism inherent in the genre. The show also features insights from other horror authors on the power and purpose of horror fiction, both for children and adults.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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Addressing Declining Reading Rates in Kids

• Context: National reports show only 30% of 8th graders are reading at grade level, prompting a discussion on how to inspire more kids to pick up books ([01:04]).
• Why R.L. Stine? Stine is cited by producer Amanda McMaster as “the person who made me a reader. His stories are addictive.” ([04:01])
• R.L. Stine’s Mission:
  • Stine’s “secret sauce” is to make books fun, without moralizing or challenging vocabulary:

    “The only moral in a Goosebumps book is run, run away.” ([04:22])
    “The books are only entertaining. They don’t add IQ point. Kids don't get more IQ points. But the books are just designed to say, look, you can have a lot of fun reading a book, and that's all I care about.” ([04:41])

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Philosophy of Writing for Kids

• No Broccoli in the Broth:

  • R.L. Stine rejects the traditional notion that children’s books must have characters who “learn and grow”:

    “We are allowed to read all kinds of things, right? You read books where the characters don’t learn and grow at all. And why shouldn’t kids have that same right?” ([05:52])

• The Joy of Story:

  • His process is focused on entertainment and accessibility for the 7–12 age group, which he considers “the best audience you can have” because it’s “the last time in their lives they’ll ever be enthusiastic.” ([05:10])

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The Intersection of Horror and Humor

• Defining Horror:
  • For Stine, it’s simply about surprise:

    “For me, it’s just shock, scaring surprises. Horror is just surprising, surprising the reader.” ([06:43])

• On Similarities Between Humor and Horror:

  “There’s such a close tie between horror and humor… It’s the same visceral reaction. You sneak up behind somebody and you go, boo. What’s the first thing they do? They gasp, right? And then they laugh.” ([07:08])

• “Bubblegum Horror”:
  • Stine’s books deliberately avoid real danger or violence:

    “Some people called my books bubblegum horror. …No one ever dies in a Goosebumps book. …It’s all just teasing, really.” ([08:01])

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Why Kids Love Being Scared

• Safe Scares:

  “Kids like to be scared and have these scary adventures and... if they know they’re in their room reading at the same time, it’s their safe scares.” ([09:26])

• Stine Himself Doesn’t Get Scared:

  “…I don’t get scared by scary books or movies. There’s something like missing in my brain. Horror makes me laugh. I think horror is funny.” ([10:15])

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Writing Process & Creativity

• Ideas Start With a Title:

  “I don’t try to think of ideas anymore. I only think of titles. …Once I have that basic idea, I do a chapter by chapter outline of every single book I write.” ([14:12])

• On Outlining to Avoid Writer’s Block:

  “When I sit down to write a book, I know everything that’s going to happen in the book. ...If you have that, how can you have writer’s block?” ([15:46])

• Speed & Prolificacy:
  • At the height of Goosebumps’ success, he was writing “a book a month” ([16:10]) — sometimes finishing a book in “two or three weeks.” ([17:05])

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Crafting “Safe” Horror for Kids

• Importance of Happy Endings:

  “There has to be a happy ending, for one thing. There has to. And then a little twist at the end. But the happy ending is very important.” ([17:42])

  • Kids are quick to notice and reject unhappy endings:

    “I’ve never done another unhappy ending.” ([18:38])

• Origins of Goosebumps:

  “My wife and her partner…said, ‘No one’s ever done a scary series for 7 to 12.’ …I didn’t want to do Goosebumps. …I knew it had to be a mix of funny and scary.” ([19:25])

  • The first book, Welcome to Dead House, Stine admits, “is too scary for the series… I didn’t have the mix yet.” ([20:33])

• How the Name “Goosebumps” Came About:

  “I was reading TV Guide and there was an ad that said, ‘It's Goosebumps week on Channel 11.’ And I just stared at it. I said, ‘Goosebumps. That’s perfect.’” ([20:58])

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Encouraging Kids to Read

• Let Kids Choose:

  “I always advise adults, let them read what they want to read and that’s it… I just try to show you, you can put your iPad down, put the games down and turn to a book for entertainment.” ([21:58])

• Comic Books as a Gateway:

  • Stine recounts how comic books and a perceptive librarian led him to Ray Bradbury and a lifelong love of reading ([12:04]–[13:15]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On not writing “from the heart”:

  “I’ve written over 300 books, not a single word from my heart… just to entertain people, just a good story.” — R.L. Stine ([11:14]–[11:37])

• His “least favorite” Halloween costume:

  “They came back with a fuzzy yellow duck costume. And I wanted to be scary and I had to be a fuzzy yellow duck at Halloween time. I was mortified. But I tell you, I used that in The Haunted Mask.” — R.L. Stine ([26:24])

• On his favorite pun title:

  “Little Shop of Hamsters. …It was hard to make hamsters scary, I’ll tell you.” ([27:49])

• On rapid-fire horror canon:

  “Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley? —Mary Shelley. Edgar Allan Poe or Shirley Jackson? —Both.” ([26:03])

• On the best writing advice he ever received:

  “My editor handed the manuscript back with two words: ‘more lore.’ That was the best advice I ever got.” ([29:04])

• On the essence of a Goosebumps story:

  “Every story has a beginning, a middle, and a twist. I love that. I wish I had written it.” ([38:00])

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The Optimism of Horror (Other Authors’ Perspectives)

• Horror as Uplifting:

  “The suggestion of ghosts and otherworldly creatures…is so optimistic because it suggests there’s more to life than this.” — Josh Malerman ([32:16])

• Survival as Hope:

  “If one person can prevail against these overwhelming odds, then…I can feel hearted. They can feel like…that’s a model for how I can resist all the negative forces in my life.” — Paul Tremblay ([34:12])

• Horror as an Emotion, Not Genre:

  “Horror is not a genre. It’s an emotion. …To me, weirdly, I always have felt that horror maybe is the wrong word. But you can’t put ‘dread’ on the category title of a book… It creates an elevated emotional state…and is cathartic.” — Chris Golden ([34:39])

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R.L. Stine’s Enduring Appeal and Optimism

• Continued Optimism:

  “Children’s books are a $2 billion industry. So someone’s reading those books… Children’s publishing has just grown so much…that makes me very optimistic.” ([27:09])

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Rapid-Fire Q&A with R.L. Stine ([26:03]–[29:38])

• Favorite costume: Fuzzy yellow duck (least favorite, but well remembered).
• Still optimistic about reading? Yes, greatly so, because of booming children’s publishing.
• Favorite punny title: Little Shop of Hamsters.
• Weirdest office item: Three-foot-long cockroach (stage prop from Mostly Ghostly).
• Best career advice: “More lore.”

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Takeaways & Recommendations

• R.L. Stine’s philosophy—“let kids read what they want”—echoes throughout the episode and underlines the point that reading for pleasure is the surest way to foster lifelong literacy.
• Goosebumps and Fear Street provide “safe scares” that both entertain and reassure young readers, often with a clever twist ending.
• Horror, especially in children’s books, is less about fear and more about surprise, humor, and empowerment.

Kate’s Closing Recommendation: Take your kid to the library or bookstore, grab something scary, enjoy sharing ghost stories, and let Goosebumps prove that horror can be both a gateway to reading and a source of optimism ([36:29]).

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Essential Timestamps

• [01:04] — National reading report and why R.L. Stine is vital for kids’ literacy
• [04:13] — Stine’s writing philosophy & the “secret sauce”
• [06:43] — Defining horror and blending humor with scares
• [09:26] — The concept of “safe scares” and Stine’s own lack of fear
• [13:20] — Comic books as Stine’s childhood reading gateway
• [14:12] — Stine’s process: titles, outlines, and writer’s block
• [17:42] — The importance of happy endings in his stories
• [19:25] — The origin of Goosebumps and balancing fright with fun
• [20:58] — Naming the series “Goosebumps”
• [21:58] — Why he never tells kids to “just read a lot”
• [26:03] — Rapid fire questions: literary heroes, Halloween costumes, office oddities, and advice
• [27:09] — Optimism about kids and reading in the current era
• [29:04] — The best writing advice he’s ever gotten
• [38:00] — Favorite line: “Every story has a beginning, a middle, and a twist.”

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For listeners both nostalgic for Goosebumps and curious about fostering a love of reading, this episode delivers wisdom, wit, and a satisfying scare—with, of course, a happy ending and a twist.

Transcript

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[Kate]

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[R.L. Stein]

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[Charlie]

Welcome listeners. It is the Bookcase with Kate and Charlie. Once again coming your way down the trail of reading. Don't give me a look.

[Kate]

I did give him a look, you guys. You can't see that I gave him a look, but I gave him a look because it's Halloween week and he just made reference to like get along little doggies, which is not really how I think of Halloween. I think of Halloween as more like, ooh. But we can do get along little doggies if you want. Hello little doggies, I'm Kate.

[Charlie]

I hope everybody has now bought their Halloween candy and are ready for the trick or treaters to arrive.

[Kate]

I don't have any candy yet. Sorry. I'll admit that.

[Charlie]

We'll get out there and get it, kiddo. Last week we focused on the new report that indicates that middle schoolers, particularly eighth graders, are not reading as much as they used to and are not reading up to proficiency levels. Only 30%. 30% of 8th graders are reading at proficiency levels, reading where they should be. And, and that's really deeply disturbing. We've spent a lot of time on this, on this podcast and that report was really important. And so we thought we'd follow up with an author who may do as well, appealing to that age group as any other.

[Kate]

Yeah, I think he's written the second best selling series in the history of books. So, you know, that's really impressive. He's, I believe, second to only J.K. rowling and the Harry Potter series. We're talking about R.L. stine, who has written close to, I believe, 500 titles that are all sort of meant to be scary and to let kids enjoy the wonderful wacky antics of horror at a young age. And I have to admit, I hadn't read any R.L. stine. I started right with Stephen King. We tore the band aid right off. I just passed go and went right there. But I read five books of his in anticipation and I loved every one of them. They were all very different, great stories, twisty endings, and you get the sense when you read them that he is having fun writing them.

[Charlie]

And they are written for kids who are in the 7 to 14 or 13 year old range. But as I've read Them, I really enjoy them.

[Kate]

They're very good.

[Charlie]

I have a college education, but I can dip down. And I just think they're wonderful. And I can't imagine any kid getting into R.L. stine books and not wanting more. Amanda McMaster, who is the producer of this podcast, you hear her name at the end of every show, said to us, look, if we're serious about talking about these kids who are not reading enough in this age cohort, you got to talk to R.L. stein, because he has written, as Kate mentioned, more books that are in my library. And he churns them out quickly. They're short. But he says, as you'll hear, the critical thing is that each one be a good story. That's the key. As I say, as you'll hear from him. So I want to get right to it. Let's play our conversation with R.L. stein, Bob Stein, as he is known. Bob Stein, it is a pleasure, a real pleasure to have you in the bookcase. I think everybody who reads and has read as a kid has you somewhere in their bookcase. But it's particularly fortunate for us to have you with us now since last week's podcast focused on a new report that says that only 30% of middle schoolers are now reading up to their grade level. That's down from 35% a year ago, and that's still a real cause for concern. Amanda McMaster, who is our producer, said, you've got to talk to R.L. stein since he is the person who made me a reader. His stories are addictive. So what's the secret sauce? How do we get these kids reading?

[R.L. Stein]

Well, my secret sauce is not to teach them anything. Basically, my books have no hard vocabulary words. People always ask me, what's the moral of these books? There aren't any. The only moral in a Goosebumps book is run, run away. And no, I'm serious here. The books are only entertaining. They don't add IQ point. Kids don't get more IQ points. But the books are just designed to say, look, you can have a lot of fun reading a book, and that's all I care about.

[Kate]

So what is the secret sauce in terms of you, of finding that voice? Because obviously you're intelligent, man, you know a lot of vocabulary words. But when you sit down to write for a specific audience, do you have to get into a specific voice to write your work?

[R.L. Stein]

Well, I, you know, Goosebumps is 33 years old now. I found the boys a long time ago. Who would believe 33 years of goosebumps. You know, when we started out, I said, let's do two or three. And now it's 33 years later. But I, you know, it's my audience. I just relate to this audience, the 7 to 12 year old audience. It's the best audience you can have. I get them the last time in their lives they'll ever be enthusiastic.

[Charlie]

But Bob, what I hear you saying is they need a good story. I can't worry about. I want to take the broccoli out of the dinner. I want to just give them the good stuff that they want to eat. And that's really hard to do, I would think, at times.

[R.L. Stein]

Well, I don't know. It's been easy for me. I haven't had a problem with that, taking the broccoli out. Charlie, There used to be a rule in children's publishing that in every book, every character had to learn and grow. This was a solid rule. And I always wondered why. We are allowed to read all kinds of things, right? You read books where the characters don't learn and grow at all. And why shouldn't kids have that same right? And that's what I've always thought, that kids have the same right to read anything as adults do.

[Kate]

It's like three years ago where I did a series where I talked to horror authors because I'm a huge horror fan. So we talked to Josh Malerman and Stephen Graham Jones and, and Paul Tremblay and I want to ask you some of the questions we asked them to see if your answers differ at all. How do you define the word horror? How do you define the genre of horror?

[R.L. Stein]

Well, for me, it's just shock, scaring surprises, horrors, just surprising, surprising the reader.

[Kate]

And that's the same for adults and for kids that definition.

[R.L. Stein]

Well, I think for adults you have to be scarier. You know, the thing is, I never planned to be a horror writer. Never. It wasn't. It's embarrassing. It wasn't even my idea. I was always funny. I wrote joke books for kids and I did a humor magazine for kids for 10 years called bananas and all. I. I only cared about being funny. And I found out since I've been a scary guy now that it's the same visceral reaction. There's such a close tie between horror and humor. You know, when you sneak up behind somebody and you go, boo. What's the first thing they do? They gasp, right? And then they laugh. It's the same visceral reaction.

[Charlie]

I would characterize what you write as horror light, though. I mean, it never gets too heavy. There's no, there's no slasher in those books. They're, they're, they're just, they're good stories. Do you take a totally different approach given the fact that you're aiming at 7 to 12 year olds than you would if you were writing to adults?

[R.L. Stein]

Oh, completely. Some people called my books bubblegum horror. I like that kind of like, I don't know, I think that's kind of, kind of good. No one ever dies in a Goosebumps book. You know, it's not, it isn't real horror. It's all just teasing, really. It never goes. We never, I never go too far with it if you have to, you know, these are 7 to 12 year olds. I don't really want to terrorize them. You just want to get them reading.

[Charlie]

Last week we talked with, with Rick Riordan, who is, wrote the Percy Jackson books. And we also talked to Katherine Rundell, who writes such wonderful fantasy. And we talked to them about how you appeal to that age group. They talked about demigods, they talked about fantasy, they talked about humor. But as I say, you write horror light. It seems counterintuitive to me that horror would bring so many young people to books.

[R.L. Stein]

I didn't understand it either. I wrote this first teen horror. I started out writing teen horror and I wrote a book called Blind Date and it was a number one bestseller. I'd never been there on that list with my funny stuff. I thought, why? What's going on here? And I would visit schools to find out. I didn't understand. And every single time I say, why do you like these books? Kids would say, we like to be scared. We like to be scared. And I say, well, don't you think this book is too scary? Not scary enough every single time. But I figured out that kids like to. Everyone likes to be scared if they know they're safe at the same time. You know, kids like to be scared and have these scary adventures and fight these monsters and go after these ghosts and get lost in the dark. And if they know they're in their room reading at the same time, it's their safe scares. I have this problem that I don't get scared by horror. I don't get scared by scary books or movies. There's something like missing in my brain. And I don't. I. Horror makes me laugh. I think horror is funny. Horror movies make me. If, if I'm watching, you know, a shark and the shark comes up and is chewing up a teenager, I'm the one in the theater who's laughing? I don't know. People say to me, after I read your book, I had to leave all the lights on. I had to lock my door. I've never had that feeling. I don't know what that is. I'll read a Stephen King novel and think, this is really clever. Oh, that's very good. It's funny. But I never get scared.

[Kate]

Well, thank God you became a writer and not a cliff jumper. But I am interested in that because a lot of the horror authors we talked to, because I asked them, you know, do you feel like as a horror writer you are fearless or you're scared of everything? And most of the horror authors we talk to, if not all of them, said, we're scared of everything, but you just don't have that. And that's how we work out our fears, is we write horror, but you just don't have that.

[R.L. Stein]

Oh, I don't have that. I don't work out any fears. I don't work out anything. You didn't get.

[Charlie]

You didn't get.

[R.L. Stein]

I always thought, you know, all these writers who go to schools and they give an assembly in school and they say, kids, write from your heart. Always write from your heart. Those kids will never write another word. Of course, I've written over 300 books, not a single word from my heart. Just, you know, they write just to.

[Charlie]

Entertain people, just a good story.

[Kate]

So do you write what amuses? Like, if, if. If an idea is making you laugh really hard, your process is, then I bet this is going to scare some people because it's making me laugh my butt off. I mean, is that sort of the. The litmus test for you?

[R.L. Stein]

Some, sometimes. Okay. I just try to figure out what's scary for kids, you know.

[Charlie]

Were you a reader yourself first or a writer?

[R.L. Stein]

Well, when I was a kid, I. I did not read books at all. People always say, hey, what was your favorite children's books? And I read only comic books when I was a kid. You know, there were these great horror comics, Tales from the Crypt and the Vault of Horror. And I loved my friends and I just had big stacks of comic books. We run around. I'll tell you my librarian story. I just got back from my hometown, Columbus, Ohio, and visited my old library. And when I was like 9 or 10, I'd read only comics. And my mom dropped me off at the little library in town, and the librarian was waiting for me. And she said, bobby, I know you like comic books. I'm going to show you Something else I think you'll like. And she took me to a shelf of Ray Bradbury stories. And that changed my life. Those stories were so wonderfully written and so imaginative and all had funny twist endings, and they were just Ray Bradbury. And that librarian turned me into a reader. And then I really started to read all kinds of science fiction and fantasy and all kinds of books thanks to them.

[Charlie]

Take me through the process of a Bob stein book, an R.L. stein book. Tell me the process that you go through from. From how it starts to. To where it ends.

[R.L. Stein]

You really want to talk about that?

[Charlie]

Yeah.

[R.L. Stein]

Yes. Really? I always think processes and. Oh, okay, here's. Here's the thing. People are my most asked question and every author's most asked question.

[Charlie]

Where do you get your ideas?

[R.L. Stein]

Ideas from ideas. This is. This is a true story. I was in San Antonio airport, and I was pulled out of line by the TSA agent. And I was being searched, and I had my arms out. I had my belt off, and the guy was wanding me, this TSA agent, and he said, can I ask you a question? I said, yeah, okay. He said, where do you get your ideas?

[Kate]

Oh, good.

[R.L. Stein]

Isn't it perfect? Anyway, it's just a great moment. Anyway, I don't try to think of. I've written so many books. I don't. I don't try to think of ideas anymore. I only think of titles. So, Charlie, my process, I think, is backwards. For most authors, I have to have a title first, and then the title will lead me to the story. I was walking my dog in Riverside park, and these words flashed into my head. Say cheese and die. What? Where'd that come from? I have these words. And then I said, well, what if there's an evil camera? And what if kids discover this camera? And then what if the camera takes bad pictures of things that happen in the future? And so the title leads me to the story, and then once I have that basic idea, I do a chapter by chapter outline of every single book I write. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline. This is what happens in chapter one. This is the funny chapter ending. This is what happens in two. And I usually. I try to get the ending very early so I know how to keep the reader from guessing the ending. And everyone hates to outline, but I can't work without it. So when I. You know, kids always think, you sit down and we're just start writing a book, I always tell them, you know, I do all this work first. They always ask me about writer's block. What do you do about writer's block? And I say, if you do all that preparation, I mean, when I sit down to write a book, I know everything that's going to happen in the book. And if you have that, you. How can you have writer's block? You can't.

[Charlie]

But, Bob, you are so prolific that going through that process, I, I just. Going through your bibliography, for instance, I just started to count the books from 1997. Now I got up, I got up close to 50. And I'm thinking, I'm thinking, he's turning out a book a week. That's just.

[R.L. Stein]

No, I was doing a book a month. I was doing 12 Goosebumps books a year back in the day.

[Charlie]

Well, even a book a month, that's not going through the process you just went through. It seems to me that's, that's unbelievable that you would, that you would turn out one a month.

[R.L. Stein]

I don't know how I did it. I didn't get out much at all, you know, to be serious. I had been riding for 20 years and no one had noticed. And I think to have that sudden success, this amazing Goosebumps just took off all over the world. And to have. It was so exhilarating. I think that's what kept me going. And also I'm lucky I lost so much of it is lucky. I mean, people don't talk enough about luck. Writing is, it's the only thing that's easy for me, really write it. You know, I can do an outline in a few days and I can write a Goosebumps. The Goosebumps books are short, of course, but I could write one in two or three weeks.

[Kate]

I want to talk to you about how you create a sense of safety for kids. Because I, I, I read in a, a PBS interview that you said, don't go too far if you gave my kid nightmares. And I feel like I hate that. That's not the point. How, I mean, because to me, I've read now five or six of your books. There is a little bit of a happy ending, and then there's. But not so fast, kids. That's how it feels like. So how do you walk that line? How do you give kids that sense of safety and yet still scare the pants off of them? I mean, is it just the instinct that allows you to do that?

[R.L. Stein]

There has to be a happy ending, for one thing. There has to. And then a little twist at the end. But the happy ending is very important. The most important thing in Goosebumps is they have to know it's a fantasy. They have to know it couldn't happen in real life. And if I establish that it's something crazy, it's something that could never happen to them, then I can go pretty far with the scares because they're not going to really believe it. You don't want them to think this is nonfiction or something when I start. But I call you. The happy ending is so important in these books. I once wrote a Fear street book, and just for fun, just for fun for me, I gave it an unhappy ending. I had. The good girl gets taken away as a murderer, and the murderer gets. Just for fun, one book. And the kids hated this book. They turned on me immediately, and I got mail. Dear R.L. stein, you moron, how could you write, you idiot, why did you write that? And I would visit school and some kid every time would raise his hand, why did you write that book? Why did you do that? It haunted me. And they kept saying, are you going to write a sequel to finish the story? They couldn't accept it, and I did. I had to write a sequel to finish the story for them. I've never done another unhappy ending.

[Kate]

Your wife was the one who initially challenged you, right, to say, I wonder if you can Write horror for 7 to 12 year olds. So, I mean, when you sat down to write the first one, what were the challenges in your mind? How did you. How were you like, okay, I'm gonna do this, but I need to work on it this way.

[R.L. Stein]

Oh, that's good. Yeah. My wife and her partner had a company called Parachute Press, and we were already doing the teen series Fear street, killing off teenagers. And they said, no one's ever done a scary series for seven to 12. We have to try it. And here's the kind of businessman I am. I said, no, I don't want to do it. Right. I didn't want to do Goosebumps. I thought it would mess up the Fear street audience. And they kept after me and kept after me and finally said, okay, let's do two or three if I can think of a good name for it. Because I knew it couldn't be real horror. I knew it had to be a mix of funny and scary. And then after Goose. But I tell you the very. When I see you ask me when I wrote the very first one, which is called welcome to Dead House. Your boy who comes to a town, and everyone in town says, I used to live in your house. I used to live in your. He's moved into a zombie town. He doesn't know it. I think that book is too scary for the series.

[Kate]

Really.

[R.L. Stein]

I didn't have the mix yet. I think it's. I don't think it belongs the first one. I didn't really catch on till the next book.

[Charlie]

Well, I characterized it as horror light. And I think the title for the series, Goosebumps is perfect. It tells you that this is going to be light and that you're going to have fun reading this and that you're going to get a laugh or two out of it. Who came up with the word goosebumps?

[R.L. Stein]

And I did. But I've been trying to think of another title for 30 years. I haven't been able to come up with one as good. Listen, Charlie, I was reading TV Guide magazine. I was looking for a title. I had no idea. And in those days, TV Guide had the TV listings in the middle of the magazine and looking what's on that week. And there was a tiny little ad on the bottom of a page that said, it's Goosebumps week on Channel 11. And I just stared at it. I said, we'll call it channel 11. That's perfect. Joke, bad joke. But that's where Goosebumps came from, is a little ad for Goosebumps week on Channel 11. And that's where I got the name.

[Charlie]

So let me finish with a question that I think is so important, and that is when you go and talk to kids, young people, how do you tell them and what do you tell them about why it is so important to read?

[R.L. Stein]

I don't. I just try to entertain them and read them stuff that they will like. And I always advise adults, let them read what they want to read and that's it. But I never say to kids, oh, read a lot. You have to read. I don't say that. I don't think it means anything to kids. And I almost never give advice, but I just try to, you know, just to show you you can put your iPad down, put the games down and turn to a book for entertainment. And this will be really fun, this book. And I'll tell it no story from a book or I'll read part of a book for kids just to demonstrate.

[Charlie]

That you got to reading the same way I did. I started with comic books. Comic book after comic book after comic book. They only cost a dime in those days and.

[R.L. Stein]

Yeah, I know.

[Charlie]

And I could buy five with my allowance, which was. Which was really. Well, the world was my oyster.

[R.L. Stein]

Nice. I have my barber shop had a huge stack of horror comics. And this is true. I. I used to go every Saturday morning and get a haircut so I could read. I had less hair when I was.

[Charlie]

A kid and you don't have much now.

[R.L. Stein]

Thank you for mentioning that.

[Charlie]

So we asked Bob Stein to stand by for some rapid fire questions.

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[Charlie]

Some rapid fire questions for R.L. stein. Bob Stein? A Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley? Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe or Shirley Jackson?

[R.L. Stein]

Both.

[Charlie]

You could be a politician.

[R.L. Stein]

Yeah.

[Kate]

What was your favorite Halloween costume you wore as a kid? And what was it?

[R.L. Stein]

I only have a least favorite Halloween costume. My family was very poor and my parents went out Halloween time. I wanted to be something really scary and they went out to the dime store to buy a costume for me and came back with a fuzzy yellow duck costume. And I wanted to be scary and I had to be a fuzzy yellow duck at Halloween time. I was mortified. But I tell you, I. I used that in the Haunted Man.

[Charlie]

You did?

[Kate]

I did. I was meant to say Carly Beth dodged a bullet there.

[R.L. Stein]

Used it. It's a true story. I was a Fuzzy Duck in 2024.

[Kate]

You said, I'm very optimistic about kids and reading. Are you still as optimistic now?

[R.L. Stein]

Very. And I would say again, when I started in children's publishing, you know, a while ago, here's what children. The children's publisher was two women in the back of the office. That was the children's department. And now children's books are a $2 billion industry. So someone's reading those books. Children's publishing has just grown so much. It's a huge business now. So that makes me very optimistic.

[Kate]

You got some great puns in your titles. Like there are some seriously pulpy puns in your titles. Do you have a favorite title?

[R.L. Stein]

I probably. Oh, I guess my favorite title is Little Shop of Hamsters. And listen, it was hard to make hamsters scary. I'll tell you.

[Kate]

I love that. I love that there's garden gnomes too, as I recall.

[R.L. Stein]

Yeah, Attack of the Lawn Gnomes, right?

[Kate]

Yes, yes, yes. I've seen pictures of your office and it's weird. But what is the weirdest thing in your office that you love the most?

[R.L. Stein]

I have a three foot long cockroach in my office.

[Kate]

I've seen it.

[R.L. Stein]

Now, most people, I can't turn the thing around. You can't see it. Most people don't have a three foot long cockroach. I tell everyone I caught it under the sink.

[Kate]

Your wife must love that. Your wife must just love that.

[R.L. Stein]

No, she hated. Was a stage prop from a children's production of Mostly Ghostly and they sent it to me. I. I didn't ask for it. I didn't want it. They sent me a three foot long cockroach and I had a place to put it.

[Kate]

You don't give advice. I get that. But what was the best piece of advice you have ever received about your career?

[R.L. Stein]

I'll give you a serious answer. I did an Indiana Jones book that took place in the Himalayas and the editor handed the manuscript back. This is a serious answer. Handed the manuscript back with two words on the top. She said, more lore. That was the best advice I ever got.

[Kate]

I love it.

[R.L. Stein]

More story, more background, more deeper. Do more research, more anecdotes, more atmosphere. It was more lore. Great advice.

[Charlie]

R.L. stein. Thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it. We've mentioned his name a number of times. As I said earlier, he's probably in every bookcase in America with people who've had kids who are in the eighth grade. But now he's in our bookcase. And you should know, if you don't know him, that it's not s t e I n it's r l stein s t I n e. With over.

[Kate]

400 titles to his name, he has not done a title more than once once, which is impressive. And there are some really great pulp fiction B movie titles in there, like what you'd expect to see on the Late Late show at Channel 10, you know, and my favorite, my personal favorite, I love that he mentioned Little Shop of Hamsters, which I think is amazing. But I loved there was one about cheerleaders that was called Gimme a K I L L. I love that. That's weird. It's pulpy. And again, like as a kid I would buy that just based on the title. Like, that's such a cool title.

[R.L. Stein]

Yeah.

[Charlie]

So Kate, you've educated me a little bit on horror books. And Bob Stein writes the kind of horror books that I really like because I always know as I'm reading them that they're going to be amusing and that in the end things are gonna be all right and, and nobody is going to vanish. He's written some that do have some unfortunate parts to them, but I think the Goosebumps series is so magnificently named. The first series that he wrote was what, Fear Street.

[Kate]

Yes, Fear Street. And there are dead bodies in Fear Street. As he gets older, the body count, I mean, you can correlate the age of the book with the body count, I think. And Fear street has a body count. But I, I have to say I'm pretty hard to scare. Well, maybe I'm not, I don't know. But I read a couple of the teen books and I found one of them kind of scary. And, and he just, I mean he's a great writer for kids. He sucks you right into the plot. He can speak from a male or a female point of view. He gets the awkwardness of teenagers and you know, and the whole. Parents don't understand and don't believe that there really is a monster in their closet. But guess what? In most of their books there actually is a monster in the closet. I just, I, I really enjoyed like again, I took down five books in a couple of days and I enjoyed every single one of them. Each one was a horror filled romp.

[Charlie]

So we have learned a good bit about horror books in the time that we have been doing this podcast and they've had some very interesting things to say because it's not just about scaring people. Josh Malerman, for instance, who has been tremendously successful in writing horror books and he thinks horror is uplifting.

[R.L. Stein]

I think that the suggestion of ghosts and otherworldly creatures and demons and these kinds of things, whether you believe it or not, the suggestion, and a momentary belief even, is so optimistic because it suggests there's more to life than this. And so to be walking around daily with a fear of death, which I do walk around daily with, there's something attractive about a genre that shows me a million alternatives to just bleak finality.

[Kate]

I love the idea of being turned into a clanky, crotchety, gross ghost is optimistic because it offers you an alternative to death. You know, I think one of the things you took away from the series that I did in horror, I hope you listen, because I like, I say I'm a big horror fan, so those horror shows were a real labor of love for me. But he was not the only writer to say that horror is optimistic. And I think you found it fascinating that people that write about sliced jugulars and decapitated heads could look at what they do, their art as optimistic in any way. Stephen Graham Jones, who wrote, which came out this year, the Buffalo Hunter Hunter, which is one of Obama's big books for 2024, by the way. It's in his top 10. He also says horror is optimistic. And I'll let him tell you why.

[Charlie]

If.

[Paul Tremblay]

If I can, like, subscribe or long for either type of horror, almost the type of horror, that it's gonna break down people's, I don't know, sleep patterns, I guess, and then, then hopefully instill a little kernel of hope in them. That's what I want. That's real horror is really about for me, is hope. The slasher in particular, which seems to be what I write the most, is about somebody in a mask and a machete coming after a group of people for whatever complicated reason. And one person makes it through the night or the weekend or the reunion or the, you know, whatever it is, this family, the thing, and they fight and struggle and sacrifice pieces of themselves to make it through this dark tunnel to get to the light again. And that one person, if one person can prevail against these overwhelming odds, then I have to think that someone reading this story can feel hearted. They can feel like, you know, that's a model for how I can resist all the negative forces in my life.

[Charlie]

And R.L. stein was saying that there's such a close correlation between horror and humor. That sounds counterintuitive, but so many of the writers we've talked to have made exactly that point. Like Chris Golden.

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Horror is not a genre. It's an emotion. And so for me, horror can be so many different things, but it's about the way that we make you feel. And to me, weirdly, I always have felt that horror maybe is the wrong word. But you can't put dread on the category title of a book because that, to me, is what we're doing more is we're unsettling people. It creates an elevated emotional state in you, and the experience of going through it is cathartic.

[Kate]

I like what Chris Goldin says. We asked a lot of these authors to also talk about their definition of horror. And so many say they're not sure they would describe the genre that they write in as horror. But more dread. Here it is, the great Paul Tremblay describing what he believes horror is.

[Paul Tremblay]

I wouldn't necessarily define horror by the scare either, because what's scary is so subjective for it. What scares you might not scare me, but I think it's just the lingering affect of dread or the feeling of dread. So I don't know. I might argue that Sophie's Choice is ultimately a horror story. I kind of have like a big umbrella or a big tent, you know, put all the circus people, I guess, under the tent of horror. Honestly, I'm not trying to be flippant. Writers for decades have tried to define what horror is. Some say it's an emotion, some say, you know, it's something else. So I. That's another thing that I sort of like about it because I feel like it can sort of like almost like a ghost, like permeate into other sort of genres and other modes.

[Charlie]

So those are some of the writers that we have talked to over the past few years who have written horror for adults. And I think R.L. stein is really interesting in that he has taken this and brought it down to kids levels to get them reading good stories. And from what I've read, every one of them is a good story. So we couldn't recommend these books more highly for people who are in that age. Cohort of say, 8 to 10, 13.

[Kate]

Yeah. So I think take your kid to the library, take your kid to the bookstore. Treat yourself to something from the horror section. Your Jennifer McMahon's, your Paul Tremblays, your Stephen Kings, your Stephen Graham Joneses, and then wander to the kids section. And both of you can sit down on a Friday night in front of the fire when things are really spooky. You can read each other the scary parts of your books and maybe exchange some ghost stories of your own. It's a great thing to do with.

[Charlie]

Halloween and he has R.L. stine has Bob Stein has a way of ending his books that well, really you want to get to the end because he always finds a little twist at the end.

[Kate]

That's really the hand always comes up from the ground. That's how I think of it. It's always like the person sitting at the grave and the hand comes up.

[Charlie]

That's R.L. stein. Bob Stein, who has, as Katie said, written over 400 books and sold around 500 million books. So he's probably in your bookcase somewhere. He's now in ours. We'll bring you up to date on the folks who may this podcast possible are thanks to Amanda McMaster in insisting that we book Bob Stein and then final thought from R.L. stine.

[Kate]

The book Case with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Arielle Chester at Good Morning America, and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Follow the bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we have them linked in the episode description.

[R.L. Stein]

When I'm talking to people who want to be writers, I always quote this thing from the very first Goosebumps movie. And it's a line I wish I had written because it just describes what I do so perfectly. In the movie, Jack Black plays me and he's a teacher at the end, and Jack Black tells his students every story has a beginning, a middle, and a twist. I love that. I wish I had written it.

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