Goosebumps #53:
Chicken, Chicken
© 1997 by Parachute Press. Cover Art by Tim Jacobus.
Spoiler-Free Review
Chicken, Chicken is widely regarded as one of the worst Goosebumps books. I can hardly say it was good, but I think it was more of a mixed bag than terrible. I certainly enjoyed it more than several other books I could name (like Go Eat Worms and You Can’t Scare Me). The first half of the book actually started out strong. It had some great body horror and comedy scenes, arguably some of the most memorable in the series. Then the second half of the book ran out of ideas, and the ending left a lot to be desired. I think the more frustrating part of this book is that it could have been good. In spite of a boring second half, the book still managed to be weird, creepy, and funny. These are all hallmarks of a good Goosebumps book. What needed to happen was a complete re-characterization of the “witch” Vanessa. The way she was portrayed here didn’t make a lot of sense in this plot or setting. With a few significant edits, this could have been really good. Unfortunately, that is not the book that got published. Chicken, Chicken may not be as bad as its reputation suggests, but it comes nowhere near being great.
Score: 2
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ERMAHGERD #53: Chicken, Chicken.
© 2024 by Daniel Stalter. All rights reserved.
Photo and editing by Daniel Stalter.
Stock Photo by stevew_photo; standard Adobe stock photo license.
Observations & Spoilers
Crystal and Cole live in the small, boring farm town of Groshen Falls. Their parents always lived in the city and dreamed of having a farm with chickens. Now their parents are living the dream and their kids resent them for it. There isn’t much to do in town except play pranks on the weird lady named Vanessa who dresses in all black. Kids do things like fill her mailbox with water. Crystal does not really partake in these pranks, but she has been around when other kids have done things. The logic here is great: we think this woman is an evil witch, so let’s get her pissed at us. There’s no way she’ll cast a spell on us or anything.
Things take a turn for the worse when Crystal and her brother accidentally knock over Vanessa’s groceries in the supermarket. They had been in a hurry. Their friend Anthony apologizes and runs off, but Crystal and Cole make the grave mistake of staring and not running off. So Vanessa points at them and says “Chicken Chicken,” At first nothing happens. Then the next day at choir practice, Cole can’t stop clucking when it comes time for his solo. This scene was actually really funny and a big part of why I wish this had been a better book. Things get even weirder at Lucy-Ann’s birthday party.
This is the scene that will forever stick out in my memory. All the kids are eating cake and Lucy-Ann is opening gifts, but all Crystal can pay attention to is her mouth starting to harden into a beak. She manages to sneak out of the party before anyone can notice. Chapped lips drying out, hardening, and reshaping themselves into a pointed beak have to be one of the most gruesome moments of body horror I’ve seen in one of these books. Crystal goes home and finds that Cole is growing feathers. She helps pluck them out, but they all grow back the next morning.
Crystal and Cole try to get help from Mom, but she has more important things to worry about. Like the Barbecue she is hosting that evening. At the Barbeque, Cole starts eating chicken feed. Crystal goes to stop him, but can’t stop herself from joining him instead. The next day at her basketball game, she can’t stop bobbing her head when she runs. There is something to be said for using humiliation as a horror theme. It’s definitely a common one in the Goosebumps books, and this one in particular. I think it’s a theme I definitely want to play around with in my writing.
I mentioned before that the book had a strong enough to start before losing steam. That might be a nice way of putting it. Losing steam implies it was gradual. When the kids decide they need to confront Vanessa, the rest of the book is just tedious. There are literally several chapters of them running back and forth between their house and Vanessa’s house. It was so bland that I’m not even going to bother giving many details. They find a spell book. They somehow make themselves really tiny and almost get eaten by Vanessa’s cat. Then it turns out Vanessa is obsessed with manners and she did this all to teach them a lesson.
After many profuse apologies, she turns the kids back into kids and offers them soda. Being very thirsty after their ordeal, they eagerly accept. They drink a bit too fast and both of them burp. This offends Vanessa’s deeply held value of good manners, and so she points at them and says “Pig Pig.” The End.
I think the core of what was wrong with Chicken, Chicken was the characterization of Vanessa. I think she needed to be established as having a stick up her ass about manners much earlier in the book. This plot would have worked really well if she had been Crystal and Cole’s aunt, who were visiting from out of town, and doing their parents a favor and watching them for a week. The manners lesson and the chickens all would have made sense in that context. As for the ending that ran off a cliff; almost anything would have been better than that last third of the book. Have Vanessa taunt the kids, or put them through a bizarre series of tests. Have her call their parents and encourage them to stay in Hawaii for another week. Give the kids a family dog that LOVES chasing the chickens. I could go on.
And thus concludes my review of the literary classic Chicken, Chicken. All jokes aside, this book was still significantly better, and more fun, than several other books in the series. It wasn’t afraid to get weird, and that counted a lot for me.
Score Card
For the scoring of each book, I decided to rate them based on five criteria worth 2 points each.
I then split that in two to give it a rating out of 5 stars. Those criteria are:
Concept: the strength of the overall idea
Execution: the mechanics of storytelling
Character: the protagonists, antagonists, and villains
Intent: does it succeed in being the kind of book it wants to be?
Originality: subversion and reliance on genre tropes
Concept: 1/2
The concept was almost there. I would call it half-baked. The manners lesson could have worked if the elements were more cohesive.
Execution: 0/2
It had a solid start that got completely lost at the midway point. It literally had the characters running back and forth and in circles. Like everything in this book, it almost worked but ultimately dropped the ball.
Character: 1/2
Crystal and Cole were believable kids that needed to learn a lesson. Vanessa didn’t quite make sense, but could have worked in a different context. Mom and Dad rank pretty high on the scale of terrible parents.
Intent: 1/2
The body horror mixed with comedy worked really well at first. With a more interesting plot, it could have added up to something instead of hitting a wall and getting stupid.
Originality: 1/2
The first half of this book has some wildly original stuff, but it ran out of ideas and had nowhere to go after that.
Based on GoodReads aggregate ratings, Chicken, Chicken is:
Ranked 56th of 62 books in the original Goosebumps series.
TV Adaptation – Bullet Review
There is no TV adaptation of this book.
Don’t miss the next post in my Goosebumps blog series:
Goosebumps #54: Don’t Go to Sleep
Also, be sure to check out the latest from my Pulp Horror blog series:
Christopher Pike’s The Wicked Heart
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