R.L. Stine scares kids–and they love it. So much so they’ve made him the best-selling children’s writer in the world, ahead of even that Harry Potter wizard, J.K. Rowling.
Stine has written more than 230 spine-tingling books, including the popular “Goosebumps,” “Fear Street” and “The Nightmare Room” series. In his newest novel, “Dangerous Girls” (Harper Collins, $13.99), Stine terrifies teens with a tale of two camp counselors who are bitten by a vampire in disguise.
So we wondered, what gives Robert Lawrence Stine the heebie-jeebies?
“I have one phobia,” he says. “I grew up in the middle of Ohio, where there’s no water. I swim pretty well, but I can’t jump into water. I never did write about it. My nephews think it’s hilarious: This big scary guy has to climb into the swimming pool.”
Stine makes everyday places, like amusement parks and schools, terrifying. How does he come up with such frightening plots?
“I guess I’m lucky that I was a very fearful kid,” he says. “Fearful and shy. I draw on that and make it scary for kids. If you do something on an evil castle in Europe, kids don’t know about that. You have to start in their own kitchen. All good horror starts in the kitchen.”
As a fearful kid, Stine stayed in his room typing, he says. “I’ve been writing since I was 9,” he says. “I wrote joke magazines, drew my own comic books. I had this superhero, Super Stooge. He flew headlong into buildings.”
So what about your night frights, we wondered. What did R.L. Stine have nightmares about when he was 10 years old?
“I was scared of all the normal kid things,” the author says. “I was scared of going into the basement. I had to put my bike in the garage every night. I always thought there was something lurking in the garage.”
What do you have nightmares about now? “Ever since I started writing the scary books, I have no nightmares,” he says. “I get it all out in the daytime. I have unbelievably boring dreams. I dreamed the other night I was making a bologna sandwich.”
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R.L. Stine will introduce his new book, “Dangerous Girls,” on Saturday at the Harold Washington Library as part of the Chicago Children’s Humanities Festival. Kids also will get to help Stine create a special spooky story. Call 312-494-9509 for information.
Michelle Branch paves the way for girls who just want to jam
By Allison Stewart. Special to the Tribune
Details, details
Birthday: July 2, 1983.
Hometown: Sedona, Ariz.
The Album: “Hotel Paper.”
The Hit: “Are You Happy Now?”
Likes: Baja, fresh Mexican food, Sheryl Crow.
Dislikes: Being compared to Britney Spears.
In some ways, things haven’t changed much for Michelle Branch since the huge success of her major label debut, “The Spirit Room.”
Despite having sold more than 2 million albums and appearing on countless magazine covers and TV shows, Branch has been able to lead a pretty normal life, without the screaming fans and packs of photographers normally associated with hot young pop stars.
“Things are the same way they always were,” says Branch, on the phone from a hotel room in New York, where she’s gone to tape the Carson Daly show. “People nag and say I need a bodyguard, but I don’t feel like I need one. I don’t go out by myself usually, and I’m always aware of my surroundings.”
Branch, 20, hasn’t had much time for a normal life, anyway: She’s been touring almost nonstop since the 2001 release of “The Spirit Room.” And she recorded her new album, “Hotel Paper,” on short breaks from touring. “I was constantly writing when I was on the road for two years,” she says. “I haven’t written a song since.”
She did find time to buy a new house in Los Angeles, although she’s hardly ever there. If she ever had a day to hang around the house, Branch thinks she “would probably wake up late and open my empty refrigerator and think that maybe I should go and get some fast food or something. I would think about going grocery shopping or cleaning, but I would probably wind up just calling some friends instead.
“Sometimes I think, ‘I wish I could spend the day in my jammies and watch cartoons.’ But I was just in Hawaii on vacation, and I was bored by the second day.”
Branch, who was raised in Arizona, started playing guitar when she was 14, and has been singing since she was a toddler. In 2000, when she was still a teenager, she recorded an independent album, the mostly acoustic “Broken Bracelet.” That record caught the eye of Madonna’s label, Maverick. The next year, Branch’s Maverick debut, “The Spirit Room,” became an unexpected smash, with a hit single, “Everywhere,” that was, well, everywhere.
“Spirit” didn’t contain many songs about Branch’s real life, partly because she wasn’t old enough to have done very much, and partly because she was embarrassed at the thought of her parents hearing her sing crush songs and wondering whom she was singing about. Two years later, things have changed.
“The biggest difference between the two albums is that ‘Hotel Paper’ is personal from beginning to end,” she says. “I think when I wrote my first record there wasn’t that much interesting in my personal life. I hadn’t had life experiences. With this album, my writing changed from what I thought about to what I was actually experiencing.”
Those experiences included a hit duet with Carlos Santana, concert dates all over the world, and appearances everywhere from the Grammys to movie premieres to the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Just as important, she helped jump-start a new trend: Thanks to Branch, it became easier for girls who write their own songs and don’t dance or otherwise act like Britney Spears to get attention.
Though Branch became known for her catchy guitar pop, she wanted “Hotel Paper” to sound different than “Spirit Room,” so she added an orchestra, a Sheryl Crow duet and a bunch of unhappy breakup songs to keep things interesting. “You start to get repetitive to yourself,” she says. “Hopefully, every time I pick up a guitar, I’m going to learn something new.”
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Michelle Branch will perform Oct. 28 at Loyola University’s Gentile Center. For information, call 773-508-3928 or go to www.luc.edu/orgs/club.
Club gives students a taste of circus life
By Mel Novit. Special to the Tribune.
Did you ever want to run away from home and join the circus?
A club at Maine East High School in Park Ridge gives students a chance to do just that–without having to pack a bag and hit the road.
The Maine East Circus Club features vaulting board acts, clowns, stilt walkers, tumblers, trapeze artists and jugglers. Of course, crazy costumes and multicolored wigs are part of the act.
“One of my students was actually a world-renowned circus performer from the Mongolian Circus who did a contortionist act with her sister,” says Betty Axelson-McClelland, Maine East’s Circus Club sponsor and gymnastics coach.
“I was very lucky to have had her in my club while she traveled worldwide to perform. Another of my students was an excellent trampolinist who went on to be a stunt man in Hollywood.”
Other club members, she says, have gone on to attend Illinois State University in Bloomington, where there is an actual performing circus and students get college credits for tumbling courses that prepare them for circus acts.
Kids do not have to be great gymnasts to join the club, Axelson-McClelland says. The only requirements are that they want to perform and have some fun and that they have a signed parental permission form.
Maine is one of the only schools in Illinois with a circus club. But some schools offer a “circus unit” as part of their gymnastics classes that includes basics like rope climbing, tumbling and somersaults, Axelson-McClelland says.
Maine East’s Circus Club has performed at convalescent homes, picnics and elementary and junior high schools. “It is fun for the students to go back [to their former schools] and perform for all the younger kids and their former teachers, to show them how much they’ve learned in high school,” Axelson-McClelland says.
Circus Club member Terrance M., 17, of Park Ridge can do a full body twist off the springboard. “I do board and floor tumbling and goofy stuff like going up in the air and acting like I’m falling,” he says. “When I fall on my back, people laugh. But it takes a lot of dedication and hard work, and it can be dangerous.”
Jenny K., 17, of Park Ridge so enjoys performing on the trapeze that she says she might like to be a trapeze artist when she graduates. “It’s like you are flying. It’s real cool,” she says.
Jenny says she learned to do poses while swinging on the trapeze. She also has an act that features her and another performer side-by-side on the trapeze with a rope between them. “We have to do the same movements so we balance each other,” she says.
There also is a trapeze act with “swingers and catchers.” A girl swings and a boy on the hanging trapeze does the catching. “I look for boys with a lot of strength in their shoulders so they are able to catch the girls,” Axelson-McClelland says.
Ursula O., 16, of Des Plaines has been in the club for three years and is its president. She says she loves to perform.
“I work off the boards and do double rotations in the air,” Ursula says. “I really like to do stunts and tricks. It’s always been a passion for me.”
But club member Kyle F., 14, of Des Plaines has a different passion: “My brothers and I are all hip-hop dancers; we like to entertain. One day I might like to try the trapeze. But dancing is my thing.”
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The Circus Club will perform in V, Maine East High School’s variety show, on Oct. 30 and 31 and Nov. 1. For information, call 847-692-8500.
Help set a record
So what do you plan to do with the extra hour you’ll gain this weekend when we roll the clocks back to Central Standard Time? The government wants you to dribble. No, Uncle Sam isn’t interested in your drool. But he is interested in getting kids off the couch and on their feet. That’s why VERB, a campaign launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to get kids more physically active, wants tweens to bounce down to Navy Pier Saturday and help set a world record for basketball dribbling. From 11 a.m to 2 p.m., kids will gather in the pier’s Grand Ballroom in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most young people dribbling basketballs. Need more info? Call 312-552-4600.
