Goosebumps 8 – The Girl Who Cried Monster

R. L. Stine's The Girl Who Cried Monster is a creepy, gross and funny Goosebumps story for 8 year olds about a girl whose family won't believe her.

What happens

Lucy Dark is twelve, and her favourite hobby is scaring her six-year-old brother Randy. She invents monsters like the Timberland Falls toe-biter, then buries her toes in the soil and shows him her foot. (Poor Randy.)

It's the summer holidays and most of her friends are away. So her parents sign her up for Reading Rangers at the town library. Once a week she has to report on a book to Mr. Mortman, the librarian.

He's short and round and bald, with tiny black eyes. His hands are always wet. And he keeps a pan of little turtles on his desk, with a big jar of flies for their dinner.

One afternoon Lucy goes back for her forgotten roller skates. Hidden in the shadows of the bookshelves, she watches Mr. Mortman's head swell up and his eyes bulge out. Then he eats a handful of flies himself.

Of course nobody at home believes her. She's told far too many monster stories for that. Isn't that the worst feeling, when for once you're telling the truth?

Lucy tells it herself and she's brilliant company. She's cheeky and stubborn and very brave (she once chased a bat out of the house with a butterfly net). She's also very honest about faking her way through Huckleberry Finn!

So she makes a plan to prove it. She hides on an empty bottom shelf at the library and waits for everyone else to go home.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The fly-eating is properly gross and it's described close up, twice. Lucy also ends up locked inside the dark library after closing time, alone with Mr. Mortman. A child who doesn't like the idea of a grown-up who's secretly a monster might find that part hard going.

If your reader enjoys a gross-out scare and a heroine who won't back down, though, this one delivers.

What to read next

If they're after another summer where the grown-ups in charge seem very odd, try Welcome to Camp Nightmare. Billy's first sleepaway camp has no nurse, a boarded-up cabin nobody's allowed near and a director called Uncle Al.