Full Moon Halloween (The Nightmare Room)
Mr. Moon is throwing a Halloween party, and Tristan and his best friend Rosa have been invited. How lame! Tristan thinks. He'd rather be trick-or-treating than hanging out with his teacher!
But Mr. Moon's party is far from lame...because he's got a couple of werewolves on the guest list! Can Tristan escape the party? Or will he find himself trapped by a werewolf in The Nightmare Room?
Full Moon Halloween Cover.
GOT U COVERED 📗
Author: R.L Stine
Published: 2001
Series: The Nightmare Room
Description: A claw reaching into a Halloween, candy-filled Jack-’o-lantern pumpkin.
“Excellent. Doors locked. Windows barred. That will keep them in. I don’t want any of these kids to escape.” - pg. 17
THOUGHTS 💭
Rosa, Tristian, Bella and Ray are school friends who each receive an invitation to a Halloween Party hosted by their teacher, Mr Moon. Very apprehensive about the idea at first (and with good reason - it is a full grown adult inviting kids to his house after all 😬), Tristian’s mom encourages them to go for simply an hour, not finding it strange at all, however she does insist they be home by 11pm. Another never-minded parent trope in full swing.
I liked this friend group. Reading their goofy interactions and conversations made me chuckle quite a bit within the first few chapters, which instantly drew me into the world of these kids and the adventure they’d be going on.
On Halloween night, they meet up in the neighbourhood, ready to go to the party. Quite disappointed that they can’t go trick or treating like the rest of the kids. As they reach Mr. Moon’s house, they are stopped by Michael Moon - their classmate and Mr. Moon’s son - who warns them to not go to the party.
Finding the warning weird, they don’t know what to make of it so they still proceed to the party. Upon being greeted and invited inside by Mr. Moon and his wife Angela Moon, they realise that there are no other kids at this party, only them.
“Uh, shouldn’t we wait for everyone else to show up?'“ Rosa asked.
Mr. Moon smiled. “Everyone is already here! You’re the only people I invited!”
Tristan gasped - pg.41
That is when they get a surprise and see that Mr. Moon and Angela press a switch that causes these trap doors to come down and windows to be barred, essentially caging them inside .
I like how this was revealed in an earlier chapter, which clued the reader in that Mr. Moon and his wife were up to something fishy, but I also had no idea what the cage was for and thought that it could be another one of R.L Stine’s fake out that ended up not amounting to much…but oh boy, it amounts to something alright.
Turns out Mr. Moon and his wife are werewolf hunters 🐺🏹 and they are convinced that one of the four kids is a werewolf, however in order to find the culprit, they need to put the kids through a series of tests and keep them till midnight when the full moon 🌕 is out to see who has been responsible for the recent attacks that has made the local news .
At this point I was surprised because I hadn’t seen that coming. I thought perhaps this was going to be a Hansel and Gretel situation where the teacher was going to capture the kids so they could eat them, but the whole werewolf hunting angle…that was quite the choice. However, I should have guessed because of the title and cover of the book, so I was Mr. Dumb McGee over here 🤭.
As mentioned they have to do these tests or as Mr. Moon calls it, Werewolf Games, which include:
Wearing the fur of previously skinned werewolves that are smelly and covered in bugs and worms while they have their picture taken.
They have to hold these creatures called Plogs (a porcupine looking thing) from the Island of Borneo which bites you if you’re a supposed werewolf. Spoiler: a kid does get bitten.
At some point they are force fed and have to eat raw meat and intestines, which causes one child to throw up 🤮. (At that point I was like, woah this is kinda literal child abuse I’m reading).
They’re also forced to drink a thick liquid called Wolfsbane against their will.
The kids are then entered into a cat-and-mouse chase with Mr. Moon and Angela, as they try various ways to escape from the crazy adults. Will they make it out alive before the night is over?
Yeah it was pretty crazy stuff to read 🤯. I was actually put off by what my imagination was conjuring up, which I don’t know if that says something about me or this book lol. This is supposed to be an innocent kids book after all.
At some point from the middle till a few chapters from the end, I started to get irritated with the story and began hate-reading 🤦🏽♂️ to just get to the answer as to who was the werewolf (if any were at all for that matter). It felt like each chapter was dragging on and on and on, because Mr. Moon and his wife would have all these test for the kids to pass, but it felt like none of the evidence was satisfactory enough, so they made them do another one to prove the werewolf’s existence, but then low and behold that wouldn’t suffice either, so yet another test would be forced upon the kids.
I get it though. Gotta keep suspicion alive and milk the mystery for as long as you can - especially because of the reveal at the end and the “twists” that follow, but wowzer…I couldn’t take it, so at some point I began to read so fast that I basically started skimming to the part that felt like it was giving me more concrete answers as to what was actually happening in the story.
Once I got there though, I must say that the ending redeemed the book and I liked how it wrapped up. It was of course bonkers and very reminiscent of Stine’s work in the Goosebumps series, but once the final page was turned, I felt satisfied that it was over and done.
I’ll rate this book C+.
There is a corresponding TV Episode that I was able to watch on YouTube, but the picture quality is so low, that my poor eyes began to hurt from having to strain against it 😵💫 . It loosely adapts the story, omitting Mr. Moon entirely, instead focuses heavily on the plogs as the main story device. It’s an OK episode. It failed to match the wackiness that the book was able to bring though, therefore I wouldn’t say it’s a must-see. I will link it below, just in case your curiosity is peaked.
