And the covers, with the ooze? I loved them. His plotlines were just crazy enough to entice and glue my middle school self to the pages, and I liked that they were a little bit scary with a little touch of chill, though they never gave me nightmares. I read them whenever I could, and I just thought R.L. Galactic lawn gnomes don't put a dent in it, especially when the story encompassing doesn't follow a thread of logic.

I probably would've liked this book as a kid, since I was a fool for reality-benders, but in my mind Stine already conquered the subject with Don't Go to Sleep! and The Cuckoo Clock of Doom.

But it never amounts to anything particularly creative or amusing, and the final wild 'twist' about the story's setting is right in the title. Plus it's clear early on the story exists in a sci-fi world, a discovery I was initially happy at, remembering one of Stine's past triumphant forays into the genre ( Twist-a-plot: Time Raider). I think the main problem is - who cares? There was never much to empathize with. The best I can figure is that this was meant to be a combination of the 'everyone is a robot' trope with the more common 'it was all a dream' device. The sister turns out to be imaginary why? Uh. The main character has no compelling primary motivation until perhaps halfway through the story. Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences.

Revenge of lawn gnomes