Book 26: My Hairiest Adventure
Fun fact... this book is what inspired this 31 book idea. About a year ago I drove my dad to have some blood drawn. While sitting in the waiting room I saw this book amongst the magazines so I picked it up and re-read most of it. I decided it’d be fun to revisit these books. When I found out that the original run of Goosebumps was 62 books I decided that I would do this for the next two Octobers.
Larry and his friends are in a rock band. They hate their classmate (and drummer of rival band) Howie and practice every day after class with the hopes of beating him in the battle of the bands. It’s after one particular practice they find a bottle of Insta-Tan that expired a few years earlier.
The next morning Larry starts to find thick black hair growing on his body. He tells his doctor about it during his bi-weekly insulin shot but the doctor just laughs at him about it.
Soon his fellow band mates Lily and Manny go missing. However when Larry finds a dog who has similar features as Lily Larry begins to fear the Insta-Tan is causing them to transform. He runs and tells his parents who tell him their dark secret.
All kids in town were dogs who the local doctor turned into children through bi-weekly shots (aka the insulin shot). The serum has stopped working and Larry is returning to his original dog form. The final chapter is from the perspective from Larry (now a dog), his former parents return home with a new baby who has eyes exactly like their cat.
All in all I like this story and always have. I love most stories about werewolfs, transformation and anything else related to people becoming animals (In the near future I want to re-read and review all of the Animorphs books). It has a great red herring with the Insta-tan. I’m glad this book continues to hold up.
THE BAD: In retrospect the whole “expires in 1991” thing seems ridiculous in 2012. I’d definitely not put 20 year old lotion on my body. Also I didn’t enjoy that the bands only played music from the 70’s, I mean sure kids like that stuff... and sure there’s the occasional band that would play classic rock but for both school bands to play only classic rock (as well as everyone fucking LOVING it) is a little far fetched. This was written when Rap, Grunge and Punk dominated the radio.
THE GOOD: The red herring is awesome and Larry is one of the more likable Goosebumps main characters. He doesn’t play pranks, he’s not whiny... he’s just a kid in a shitty situation. I like that.
THE TV SHOW EPISODE: This book isn’t interesting enough to be a two part episode, but it’s kinda dull as a half hour episode. Most of the parts that made the book interesting (Howie, Larry’s friends mocking him, The battle of the bands) have all been cut to sped up the story, the band is basically just a side thing now, where as in the book it was almost as important as Insta-Tan.
<---- Book 25. Attack of the Mutant
Book 27 ----->
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