by Nelson
Reader Beware; You’re in for a Scare!
Join us as DoubtFire ventures into the terrifying world of zombies, werewolves, egg monsters, and annoying siblings that is GOOSEBUMPS.
The Girl Who Cried Monster
The Girl Who Cried Monster isn’t really a bad book, per say. For the most part, it’s your standard Goosebumps title. It focuses on Lucy Dark, our narrator, who discovers the town librarian is really a monster. But no one believes her because she never stops telling weird monster stories to anyone within earshot. The problem with the book is that the title essentially gives away the plot. It’s “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” only with a girl and a monster instead of a boy and a wolf. Nevertheless, it packs a signature Stine twist at the end that sort of makes it stand out.
Lucy is utterly obsessed with monsters. We don’t know why or how this started. It’s just the way it is. She hardly ever talks about anything else. Her favorite past time is scaring her little brother, Randy, with stories about invisible Timberland Falls Toe Biters stalking through the neighborhood looking for feet to chomp. But her monstrous fixation doesn’t stop there. Lucy goes on about them to her parents and her best friend Aaron (obligatory boy/girl duo alert). The weird thing is that no one seems to think that the endless array of monster stories are that big of a deal. I’ve never, not once, met any kid with such an obsession, but Lucy’s parents and friends treat it like she’s just really into video games or Pogs or some other fun 90s trend.
Mr. and Mrs. Dark do kinda/sorta make an attempt to push Lucy towards other interests when they insist on enrolling her in the local library’s summer reading program – The Reading Rangers. Stine’s version of Book-It, run by head librarian, Mr. Mortman, is a little odd. It seems to consist solely of handing out books to his Reading Rangers and then asking vague “how did you feel about this” type questions (that provide absolutely zero evidence that the book has even been glanced at much less read) the following week. It also does not seem to involve personal pan pizzas at all, making it a complete waste of time. It doesn’t take very long for Lucy to catch a glimpse of the kindly librarian transforming into hideous creature with antennae-like eyeballs and an appetite for insects and turtles, and our young hero knows she’s got to tell someone about it…..
But, dangit, she’s just played too many monster jokes. No one will believe her, and her parents repeatedly become infuriated when she expresses her desire to drop out of Reading Rangers because she’s scared of being eaten alive. The only thing Lucy can do is convince Aaron to help her try and get proof. She has a few close calls, and even gets caught trying to follow the man home, but she eventually manages to prove to Aaron that she’s not lying whilst simultaneously snapping a photo the of the foul beast. Finally realizing that someone knows his hideous secret, Mortman shows up at the Dark’s house to confront the young voyeur and winds up scoring a dinner invite from her parents.
Sadly, Mr. Mortman has completely misunderstood what the Darks meant by “dinner,” and, when he shows up, Mr. and Mrs. Dark turn into monsters and eat him alive. It turns out that Lucy and Randy and Mom and Dad were all horrible fanged creatures the whole time…. only the kids’ fangs haven’t come in yet, so they can’t change form and join in on the feast. On some levels, the fact that she actually is a monster sort of explains why Lucy is so hung up on the subject, but it leaves one to wonder why on Earth her parents think the concept of monsters hiding in plain sight is so absurd or why Randy is so frightened by them. Not only is the boy a monster, himself, but he’s also got parents perfectly willing to chow down on any unsuspecting, turtle eating librarians who are actually monsters but appear to have zero ill intentions prior to being spied on by a twelve-year-old.
An interesting bit of trivia that I picked up while researching this one is that, initially, Mortman was going to be feasting on poorly performing Reading Rangers before Scholastic asked him to tone it down. This would’ve gone a long way to have made the character more of a villain and less of a guy being spied on by a nosy kid, but it’s a great example of the series beginning to tone down some of its more extreme elements.
Mom and Dad were too fast for him.
They both pounced on him. Their fangs popped down. And they gobbled the librarian up in less than a minute.
Doubtfire 