Goosebumps vs. Animorphs

[toppersbooks]

Hi! A friend of mine recently told me that there kids either read Goosebumps or Animorphs but never both. I disagreed - but I was an Animorphs fan who never picked up a Goosebumps and she was a Goosebumps fan who never touched Animorphs!
I'm really interested in seeing what other people have to say about this - especially if you grew up with the series like I did. (Mainly, I want to revisit my childhood.) What do you think?

 

[Meadow337]

I can say with great pleasure that I have never read either series. The one is just revolting horror which quite frankly no child should ever read - there are GOOD books out there! And saying 'well at least they are reading' is no more an excuse than saying 'At least they are eating' is an excuse for feeding your child junk food instead of something that actually is nutritious.

Is Animorphs even properly a book? Last I saw it was a rather badly made TV series.

 

[toppersbooks]

Actually, I thought the Animorphs book series was rather excellent until the ghost writing collective took over (about halfway through the series.) Applegate's complex (for kids' books) characterizations and how she handled morally ambiguous problems made me fall in love with books that forced me to make moral decisions on my own and were a huge factor in why I went on to read so many classics at a young age.

Now, I'd probably find them overdone and way too obvious with characters that are more tropes than anything else; as a kid, they made me think new, important thoughts and the characters were original and exciting. I didn't read Goosebumps, except one or two while I was in college, but I think you could say that Stine did the same thing for things like irony, foreshadowing, and a delight in the absurd.

I never did like the Animorphs TV series, though I'd love to see a well-written, well-directed remake of it with today's special effects.