This entry of Goosebumps is one that I remember quite vividly from my childhood. I also remember this being the first entry I owned growing up. However, I think this one may not hold up as well. In this review, I’ll see if any characters go eat worms, I’ll be disappointed if this doesn’t happen at least once.
Synopsis:
Todd Bartsow really, really likes worms. All he ever thinks about is worms and playing pranks on his sister Regina with worms. The book immediately starts with foreshadowing about evil worms, great, Todd has already jinxed himself, on page one.
Todd’s friend Danny helps him torture his sister and her friend Beth with worms. Funnily enough, Todd wants to become a scientist, however it seems pretty likely he’ll become an entomologist.
On Sunday it had rained. The next day, Todd is out worm searching behind the school looking for worms after it rains with Danny. Todd is working on a project for an upcoming science project, so he needs a lot of worms. Plus, there’s a prize on the line, a new computer.
This is when the ground starts rumbling, this causes Todd and Danny to think an earthquake is happening. They run into the school lunchroom to tell everyone. This results in everyone laughing at them, since earthquakes don’t happen in Ohio. However, earthquakes do happen in Ohio, so is everyone just super oblivious?
Later during lunch, we learn Regina and Beth are making a bird for the science fair. Todd is annoying Regina, so she tells him the book title, go eat worms! The title is dropped multiple times in this book, so I guess Stine was pretty impressed by his own book title.
Todd then bets Beth there’s a worm in her soup. Beth, who’s just made the soup takes the bet. Todd puts a worm in her soup and tells her to pay up. Great, so Todd sucks, and shouldn’t the bet apply to only when she checked, and not afterwards when he slips a worm into her soup?
Todd notices that another student, Patrick, is out digging in his worm spot by second base outside of the school. This causes Todd to go and confront Patrick, since Todd is upset another student is doing a project on worms. Absolutely ridiculous.
As Todd and Danny run out of the school, they run into a teacher and knock over her lunch tray. However, neither of them faces much punishment and they continue their journey outside of the school.
Todd reaches Patrick and begins questioning him about his project. Patrick responds he’s going to teach worms to fly by giving them paper wings. This is really dumb. What is he going to do, tape some wings on the worms, throw them in the air, and say, “look they flew for half a second.” Anyways, Todd doesn’t believe him.
All of a sudden, the three of them feel the ground shaking again, which causes them to run back into the school, and tell everyone again, resulting in the same reaction from the other students.
After school, Todd and Danny get Patrick’s address from Todd’s sister. Which makes me wonder, what is the plan? Are they going to question him again, because that clearly didn’t work the first time or are they going to try to intimidate him, which would be way over the top.
Todd and Danny arrive at the house, which could best be described as a dilapidated mansion. They go onto to the property and are chased by a dog. Todd and Danny run into the house, because of course the doors are unlocked. Upon entering, they find that the house is dirty and abandoned. They also find a monster inside and run away, luckily the dog is gone.
Turns out, the house was used for a Halloween party last year, and nobody cleaned up the place. Todd learns this by eavesdropping on his sister talking with Beth. Due to this, Todd plans to get revenge.
The next day, Todd is getting his project set up at the school for the science fair. Patrick sets up right next to Todd. Todd has built a worm house for the project, but Patrick has built a worm skyscraper measuring over six feet tall. Huh? How has Patrick built this in a single day, also, if he did this in a single day, that’s pretty impressive.
This causes Todd to become angry, since he was outdone by Patrick who just copied what he did. However, I don’t think a worm project is that unique and honestly, I don’t see how a worm house or even a worm skyscraper would win a science fair, unless they are way younger than how they’re described in the book.
In the meantime, Danny has made his own science project, a solar system of balloons, unfortunately, all of the balloons are deflated. Wow, I think the bird that Regina and Beth built may be the best project I’ve seen in this book so far.
The judges for the fair are taking a look at Regina and Beth’s project, when a judge notices a string attached to the bird. When one of the judge’s pulls it, a bunch of worms come out of the bird’s mouth, covering everyone in worms. This was the revenge plan Todd came up with. For obvious reasons, they are no longer in the running to win, and Todd is concerned Patrick will beat him.
None of this matters as Danny wins the science fair with deflated balloon solar system. What? This makes literally no sense, also, there has to have been other better science projects.
Todd and Regina then get into a fight. During the fight, Regina pushes Todd into worm skyscraper. This causes a Rube Goldberg effect as the tower knocks over another project into another project, eventually resulting in a bunch of smoke and an explosion!
Luckily, nobody is hurt, and everyone is able to escape from the somewhat deadly gas and smoke leaking from one of the science projects. Yeah, so this means that Regina and Todd are in trouble or are going to have to face some consequences… Nope. No big deal for almost causing the school to blow up.
A few days pass. Todd and Regina are still angry at each other. Regina and Beth then suggest that the worms are angry at him. I don’t think that makes sense.
The next day, Todd finds a worm in his hat before school. He confronts Regina about it, but she denies doing it. Then a worm magically appears in Todd’s uneaten cereal at breakfast with the only person around being Regina. She denies doing it. At school, Todd finds a worm in his sandwich. This is so obviously Regina.
After the discovery of his worm sandwich at lunch, Todd overhears Regina telling her friends she did it. Todd confronts her and Regina says she didn’t do it. Regina is gaslighting Todd in the most obvious way and somehow, Todd is falling for it.
Later, Todd and Danny are digging behind second base, when they feel the ground rumbling again. They think it’s an earthquake. I think the more likely answer is low level seismic activity, old pipes connected to the school that are having some type of issue, or maybe a giant worm monster. All of these aren’t very good answers, admittedly, but there’s one of these answers that may be a bit more likely than the others.
The next day, Todd finds worms in his backpack. After school, Todd hangs out with Danny. He leaves Danny’s house pretty late at night and gets home. When he gets into bed, he realizes his whole bed is covered in worms. Todd goes to confront Regina, but she has recently left to go to Beth’s house for a sleepover.
For some reason, Todd has lost his mind and starts talking to his worms. After lecturing his worms on not sneaking into his bed he goes to take a bath.
During his bath he falls asleep and has a dream that the bath is full of worms. Does Todd happen to live on Elm Street, because this seems pretty familiar. Also, it’s super dangerous to fall asleep in a bathtub during a bath, this is very deadly, I would personally not recommend doing that.
A few more days pass. Todd has been away for the weekend, and now he’s back home on Sunday night. He decides to stay up all night and catch is sister in the act. Todd sneaks down into the basement, unfortunately he isn’t very quiet and bumps into the ping pong table.
He hears footsteps coming down the stairs, Todd jumps out and catches his dad. His dad thought someone was robbing the house and had armed himself with a baseball bat. Todd’s dad then says tomorrow he was going to throw away all of the worms and he was tired of the worms. Which hasn’t been set up in the book at all, like the parents don’t really exist in this book.
The next day, Todd and Danny go to school. Todd overhears Regina admitting to doing all of the worm pranks, again. Instead of confronting her, Todd plans to get revenge on her, again.
After school, Todd is digging up more worms from behind the school. The ground rumbles again and breaks open. A giant worm has appeared. This is on page 113, the book is only 119 pages long, this is almost 95% of the way through the book.
The giant worm wraps around Todd and starts to pull him underground. Regina and Beth happen to be walking by with their giant bird; you should be able to tell where this is going.
Todd and Danny call for help. Regina and Beth come over with the bird. Somehow, the giant worm, which doesn’t have eyes, sees the bird, becomes scared, and goes back underground. On top of this, somehow neither Regina nor Beth see the giant worm and don’t believe Danny or Todd about the worm. Also, yes, I’m aware worms have light receptors, but wouldn’t this not change anything, since the giant worm would want to avoid sunlight to begin with.
Down in Ohio there’s just giant worms. Seems about right.
This is when Todd gives up worm collecting. Some time passes and Todd has a new hobby, killing butterflies. I mean, collecting butterflies and framing them. Todd is now getting along with Regina and everything is back to normal.
One night, Todd is in the basement working on his butterfly collection when a giant butterfly appears with a giant pin and comes after Todd. What is this nonsense? How did the butterfly get in the basement and how did it find a giant pin? This is such a bad ending. The book then ends.
Review:
This Goosebumps book is pretty bad. Is it the worse? No. Is it the best? No. Is it okay? No. This Goosebumps entry is disappointing for numerous reasons.
First, Todd sucks as a main character, he’s unlikable, not the brightest, and generally just isn’t a good protagonist. I can’t say anything better about any of the other characters, who are either just as bad or aren’t given any personality. The twist is awful. The ending is awful. The story is uninteresting, the plot meanders, the worm pranks are obvious, and there’s no mystery to Regina doing it, and the worst part, the book is just straight up boring.
If I had any input, I’d write it so that the worm prank mystery is solved much sooner, with the focus of the book from the second half onwards being on the giant worm. This might be a bit out there, but Todd at the halfway point could have been sucked underground by the worm and then spent the second half figuring out a way to escape from a worm society, or just from the giant worm itself, while also giving more of a reason to root for Todd or have at least something interesting going on.
It would have been cool to maybe get some ultimate battle between Todd and the worm, or Todd having to outmaneuver a giant worm.
There are some good aspects in this Goosebumps entry. First, the giant worm. The science fair does work somewhat well as a plot device to progress the story. The haunted house was somewhat cool and added some tension. I don’t think much else was good in this Goosebumps book.
Tremors did it better, or even Squirm.
I’ll give this entry of Goosebumps a 3/10. I’m very disappointed nobody ate a worm in this entry. The Haunted Mask had more worm eating.
Twist ending:
A giant butterfly with a pin shows up. This is why you leave your small basement windows closed at night.
Memorable line:
“We don’t get earthquakes in Ohio.” Yes, yes you do.
Memorable moment, cliffhanger, etc:
Down in Ohio a giant worm appears to get Todd.
Bad parenting:
The parents don’t do anything. Seems like they could care less about the worm pranks, unless it directly affects them.
Random References:
Christoper Robin, Nintendo, Lincoln (automobile), Trapper Keeper, Ping Pong, and Raiders. Many of these references are more interesting or better than this book.
Tropes in book:
Sibling pair, pranks, worm jump scare, nobody believes a character’s crazy story, dark ending, twist ending, crazy cliffhangers, a character stays up all night, and I’ll add this now, ridiculous dream sequence.
TV tie-in:
This Goosebumps tie-in episode isn’t any better than the book. A lot of the flaws from the book are fixed and then new flaws are added.
My main issue is the episode is boring. Outside of that, the main plot remains the same with the parents being more present, a lot of the dialogue is changed, and the events are more condensed. Which means that it’s bad for a shorter amount of time.
One of the cool aspects, the haunted house, is completely missing. However, Todd does land in the giant worm’s lair, by accident, and the giant worm shows up for a few seconds. The giant worm is also scared off by Regina and Beth’s bird, but it makes even less sense, since it’s at night in the episode.
The ending isn’t improved much either. Todd is lured by fish using a sandwich and ends up underwater being dragged by unseen giant fish. Todd is somehow able to talk underwater.
This Goosebumps episode is pretty bad.
I’ll give this Goosebumps episode a 3/10. No improvement over the book, but not much worse either.
Memorable episode line:
I’ll need more worms. Zillions of them.” I don’t think you’ll be able to find that many.
Famous cast:
Kristin Fairlie. 40 (Fourtee), best known for being on a monthly allowance from Drake and not being mentioned in a Kendrick diss. I wonder if in the future 40 will make sure to avoid having A Minor (chords) appear on Drake’s songs.
Come back soon for more Goosebumps fun and reviews.
To read the last Goosebumps review: https://goosebumpsblogger.com/goosebumps-20-the-scarecrow-walks-at-midnight/


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