Goosebumps 4 – Say Cheese and Die!

R. L. Stine's Say Cheese and Die is a spooky Goosebumps story for 8 year olds about a camera that takes pictures of things before they happen.

What happens

Greg and his friends are bored. Nothing ever happens in Pitts Landing (they reckon the town slogan should be "Pitts Landing is the pits"). So they dare each other into the empty Coffman house on the hill.

Down in the basement, Greg turns the handle of an old vice and a hidden cupboard pops open. Inside is a heavy camera with no name on it anywhere.

Greg snaps his friend Michael posing on the stairs. The photo slides out. A second later the railing gives way and Michael falls. And the photo? It shows him in mid-air.

Every picture after that is wrong in the same horrible way. Dad's shiny new car comes out smashed up. Greg's big brother Terry looks terrified, standing somewhere he isn't. What would you do with a camera like that? Greg's answer is to hide it in his headboard and hope.

Bird is the joker of the group and he keeps faking disasters. That's what makes it such fun for a young reader. You never quite know if the next scream is real.

There are a few things to be ready for. The friends break in and walk off with the camera, and a scary man in black seems to be sleeping in the house. On a drive in the new car, Dad nearly swerves into a lorry. Later a ball hits Bird on the head during his baseball game and he collapses.

There's nothing gory on the page. The fear comes from waiting to see whether each photo will come true. A worrier might find that waiting harder than any monster. A reader who loves a puzzle will want to work out the camera's rules before Greg does.

What to read next

If they want something with more howling next, The Werewolf of Fever Swamp takes Grady to Florida, to a new house on the edge of a swamp where something cries out every night.