Slime Doesn't Pay

 

Slime Doesn't Pay by R.L. Stine is a horror juvenile fiction book target for middle age readers and grades 5-7.

The story folows Amy and her friend Lisa who are annoyed by Amy's mean little brother who is ruining their lives. They decide to play a prank on him which ends up turning him into a slim monster and now they must find a way to turn him back.

I didn't find a reputable site that showcased this book, but my justification for including it is solely based on the authors own reputation. R.L. Stine has been a household name for young readers that has made him the Stephen King of childrens horror fiction. Kids love the fun and simple to read stories as well that makes his books so popular because they can relate to their own fears.

When evaluating this book I want to explore, I focused on three aspects central to the book. This includes, tension, mood and tone due to the horror genre of the story.

When exploring the tension of the story, we know that a story without tension will not engage the audience like one that has it. Thankfully, R.L. Stine is a seasoned author that has been scarying kids for years. Let's look at an example of how he builds tension in this book, "A wave of panic froze me on the spot. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Did the ugly creature come out of the woods, I'd never seen anything like it. Its antlered heas was lowered as it attacked. The long beak snapped loudley. A monster. I was starinh at anothe monster." The use of simple and concise sentences in this scene matched with the feeling of absolute fear from the protagonist puts us into their headspace. Thee thought of not being able to scream is a horrifying thought because its something that's so natural when we're afraid and being refused that builds the tension in a great way.

Mood is another great aspect to explore in this book. Yet again, a horror book should have a particular mood that evokes its genre. If it's horror it needs to be spooky. Let's look at the prologue that establishes the mood very early on that will inform the rest of the story moving forward. It starts with the narrator telling us the audience about something terrible she did to her brother and how he may or may not have deserved it, but that we'll understand why she did it and she promises by the end we won't hate her. Already this gives us a tone of information, the mystery of what her brother did to her, what she did to her brother and how it all went wrong. Nothing spooky has happened yet, but we know based off of this we might be in for something much more sinister than we thought when first picking the book up.

Last, let's explore tone. Tone is where our author helps us distinguish what the story is and how we should perceive it. We must remember that R.L. Stine is a children's horror author so we can already expect something spooky for lower level readers. As such Stine writes Slime Doesn't Pay from a childs perspective and taps into common fears present in children without making it too scary and still fun to read. This can be seen from the entire set up of the story, Amy pours a bucket of slime on her brother Arnie which causes even worse things to happen to her. It's set up as a classic prank you might find in more adult literature like Carrie and from there the story and Arnie get much much worse. The use of slime is an innocent enough pranks and can still create a haunting image for children.

References

Stine. R. L. (2023). Slime doesn't pay. Blackstone Publishing.