Stine, R.L.

▪ 1996

      Unless you have young children or baby-sit frequently, you may not be likely to know the name R.L. Stine. But children and book publishers worldwide do. The humour-writer-turned-horror-novelist by the end of 1995 had sold about 100 million copies of his novels in some 20 languages, an unprecedented phenomenon in the world of children's book publishing. In the fast-paced world of video games, television, and interactive software, Stine's work gave children a charge in the old-fashioned way: through reading. Remarkably, boys returned to a market dominated traditionally by girls. The unpredictability, plot twists, and cliff-hanger endings of his books relied on surprise, avoided the seriously threatening topics of modern urban life, and delivered kids what Stine termed "a safe scare."

      Robert Lawrence Stine was born Oct. 8, 1943, in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Ohio State University in 1965, having served three years as editor of the campus humour magazine. After teaching junior high school for a year, he went to New York City, where he eventually landed an editorial job with Scholastic Books. He worked there for 16 years on various children's magazines, notably Bananas, a humour magazine for older age groups. The first of Stine's more than 40 humour books for children, How to Be Funny, was published in 1982. It was a short step to his first scary novel, Blind Date (1986), a big seller that launched Stine's career as a horror writer. His Fear Street series of stories for young teens began with The New Girl (1989); the Goosebumps series for 8- to 11-year-olds was launched with Welcome to Dead House (1992). Stine wrote one 120-page book a month for each series. Their runaway popularity—they sold between one million and two million copies in retail sales monthly—rocked the publishing world.

      As if writing two books a month were not enough, Stine was working on two new spin-off series of books for 8- to 12-year-olds: The Ghosts of Fear Street and Give Yourself Goosebumps, a choose-your-own-scary-adventure line. Moving out of the book market, Stine developed Goosebumps Theater, a live-action television series that premiered in October and was broadcast in a prime-time-for-kids' TV slot. Stine also broke into the adult horror market with Superstitious (1995), a graphic hardcover book, and a movie was expected to follow. With contracts signed for three more years of Fear Street and Goosebumps, Stine was showing no sign of slowing down. "I'm writing more books than Stephen King, and no one over 14 has ever heard of me," he says. "I like that." (ANN M. BELASKI)

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