This year marks the 20th anniversary for the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine.  In the world of children’s books, he is the author most adults think of when they think of “children’s horror”, if they think of “children’s horror” at all. I was in college when Stine started writing, so I missed the beginning of the craze over Stine’s books, but by 1997 I was working in my first “real job” as a children’s librarian. The demand for his books in 1997 was tremendous– I can’t remember how many times I walked kids over to the paperback spinners or sorted through beat up copies with a kid who was looking for one he hadn’t read. It must have been absolutely overwhelming when the books first came out. It’s hard to imagine that you could have missed out on it, if you were s a kid or worked with kids and books at all in the past 20 years.

Stine didn’t start out trying to be scary. He ran a humor magazine called Bananas for ten years (here’s an interview where he talks about that and a lot of other cool stuff) and joke books for kids. But then, according to this interview in the Boston Phoenix, he realized that “what kids really want is to be scared shitless”. And he’s been writing scary stories for kids ever since. Frequently. At one time he produced a book every month!

This fall, though, Stine’s second horror novel for adults, Red Rain, will be released, and in an interview with Publishers Weekly he said that it’s been a challenge for him, after writing middle-grade fiction for kids for so many years,

The kids’ stuff comes naturally to me now. When I write horror for kids, I have to make sure that they know it’s not real—that it’s pure fantasy and could never happen. Writing for adults, I have to do exactly the opposite. It has to be real or they won’t buy it. It was fun to turn it around in Red Rain and have the chance to be really horrifying. Some really ghastly things happen in this book!”

Stine also has a television show based on his books on The Hub right now, which has been renewed for the fall season. It’s the third television series to be based on his books– pretty neat stuff!

So… exciting news, if you didn’t already know it (you might have, since most of these interviews took place at least a couple of months ago, he’s active on Twitter, and he was recently at BEA). If you grew up with R.L. Stine, you might be buying his books for your kids, and now he’s produced a “grown-up” one for the kids who grew up reading his books. If you remember Goosebumps fondly, or even if you’re just curious, now is a great time to see what he has cooking!