One night only – R.L. Stine at the AGO!
Image courtesy of the artist.
The man who haunted generations of book-loving kids and teens is coming to the AGO Wednesday night! R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps and Fear Street, will be giving a talk on his creative process and his love of monsters and scary stories (something he shares with Guillermo del Toro) as part of our Inspiration is a Monster: Conversations with Legends of the Dark Arts series. It’s the perfect ending to an afternoon exploring our exhibition Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters.
If you’re a devoted fan of his books, TV shows and movies (the 2015 movie Goosebumps, based on the book series, featured Jack Black as Stine), then you might know a thing or two about R.L. Stine. Even so, here are a few tidbits that might take you by surprise:
- R.L. stands for Robert Lawrence
- Goosebumps has sold over 400 million copies so far, making it the best-selling children’s horror series
- At one point in his career, R.L. Stine’s writing schedule had him writing a book a month
- Stine says he never gets scared: “I don't know what the feeling is. Even as a kid. It's something lacking up there or something. People say, ‘Your book keeps giving me chills,’ but I don't know what that feeling is. Horror always makes me laugh. Normal adult things scare me, but not things from a book or a movie.”
- Stine didn’t set out to become a horror writer: “I was a comedy guy and these books were so much more popular than my joke books.”
- Three movies based on the Fear Street series are being developed by Fox
- R.L. Stine has a Bleak House-like collection of horror items in his office, including a replica of Slappy the Dummy, another dummy modelled to look like Stine himself, and a three-foot-long toy cockroach that sits on top of his dog’s crate.
R.L. Stine's sold out talk at the AGO is happening on Wednesday, November 29 at 7 pm.
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