R. L. Stine

Moving to the tiny mountain village of Sherpia, twelve-year-old Jaclyn takes a hike to look for kids her own age and is warned by an old man to beware the monstrous snowman that lives at the top of the mountain.

Beware, the Snowman

Maggie Gordon

What the hell did I just read? What hallucinogenic drugs was Stine taking this time? Beware the Snowman starts off rather creepily. Jaclyn and her aunt move to an arctic village for reasons poor Jacklyn can't seem to understand. The city is very tiny and isolated, with only a few neighbours around. For the first time in her life, Jaclyn is not surrounded by people as she was in Chicago. It's a big change and an unnerving setting made worse by the freaky snowmen everywhere. Each house has an identical snowman in front of it with a deep scar marring its face. Jacklyn's new friends, two conveniently similarly aged children, tell her this is because an evil snowman lives on top of the mountain, and the town lives in fear of it. For a Goosebumps book, this isn't implausible, but the resolution is just silly. Jaclyn decides she absolutely must see the snowman for herself, so she needs past the weird man and his wolf that guard the cave and meets the monster that claims to be her father. Supposedly her aunt and mother were sorceresses who imprisoned him up there and Jaclyn must set him free! Jaclyn's aunt tries to stop her, claiming that the snowman is an evil monster, but Jaclyn says a magical poem and instantly regrets EVERYTHING because the snowman really was a monster! But then her long lost dad turns up as he's the crazy man with the wolf AND he's a sorcerer who uses his magic to take down the snowman monster thing. Why he didn't do this ten years ago when he and his wife accidentally created the evil snowthing, no one knows, but okay! Now everything is all right, the family is reunited, and now there are a bunch of mini living snowmen wandering about that daddy used to defeat the big snowman. Oh Goosebumps... you're so silly!

Beware, the Snowman

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