Before a boy wizard bounced him from his post, R.L. Stine was once the best-selling children's book author of all time. And while his scary stories reigned supreme in kids' hearts, they sat at number 16 on the American Library Association's most challenged books of the 1990s.
The kids loved him. The parents loved to hate him. To be honest, I've never been a fan. He's been writing teen and child books since the the mid-1980s, so ostensibly I could have picked one up at the library over the years. I don't remember any. I do remember picking up a Goosebumps paperback a few years ago - my Harry Potter obsession serving as a gateway back into childhood literature in my adult years. What struck me wasn't how clever the book was or how I couldn't put it down - I could have left it just as quickly as I'd taken it - but that I finally understood why my little brother always had a tough time getting these back to the library on time. It was right up any preteen boy's alley. Which is exactly what makes people's attempts over the years to have them removed from library shelves such a travesty.
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