Give Yourself Goosebumps

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Give Yourself Goosebumps is a children's horror fiction gamebook series by R. L. Stine. After the success of the regular Goosebumps books, Scholastic Press decided to create this spin off series in 1995. In fact, Stine had written gamebooks in previous years.

Fifty books in the series, including the "special editions" were published between 1995 and 2000.

1 General Plotline
2 Endings
3 List of Give Yourself Goosebumps books
- 3.1 Special Editions
4 External links

[edit] General Plotline

For the most part, play is rather simple, as the books are merely novels with branching plots. The books are written in the second person and enlivened by puzzles or choices. Rather than being simply from beginning to end, the reader is told to turn to a certain page at the bottom of the current page, at certain pages the reader will be given at least two choices of which page to turn to, depending on what they want the main character (one's self) to do. If readers make poor choices, the book may come to a "bad" ending that will feature a horrid fate for the main character but the readers are always able to go back and choose a new choice. It is also worth noting that the main character is never named and is always of ambiguous gender; therefore the reader can easily imagine themselves as the main character regardless of what sex they are. There is however a "friend character" who is named and given a gender, these characters are normally present through out the storyline but there are times when they are not. The only thing linking the main character in each story is that they are self proclaimed "Goosebumps Experts".^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Endings

Because of the choices and page connections, there are many ways the story can end. The ways vary depending on which book is being read, but largely the endings involve the reader's character dying, being permanently turned into something other than human, getting trapped somewhere inescapable (implying that one will die eventually), being put in a state of immobility such as becoming a statue, or - if the correct choices are met, getting back home. The ending pages are the only ones which don't have any choices, and simply have the words "The End", usually in bold, where the choices would usually be. Occasionally it will just say "End" because it is supposed to be part of the final sentence.

There are also endings that combine the above options, such as being transformed, and then being killed because of whatever it is they are now or an almost "good" ending in which - despite the reader's transformation the ending is still relatively satisfying, in one of the books the reader can become a dog if the wrong choice is chosen, but still gets home in one ending.

In addition, each book involves at least one page where the reader is asked a question, relating to one of the actual Goosebumps books, the reader is given the choice of turning to one of two pages - one where they give the correct answer and one where they give the wrong answer (which usually has some subtle similarities to the correct one). Answering correctly will allow the story to continue, but answering incorrectly will normally result in death.