“I went invisible for the first time on my twelfth birthday…”
Inspired by the movie Flatliners (1990), the sixth book in the original Goosebumps series is a fun, spooky urban legend about a mysterious old mirror hidden away in the attic. It follows a boy named Max on his rainy twelfth birthday party when he and his friends venture up into the attic (his parent’s house was apparently previously owned by his grandparents). Max’s all-black dog, ironically named “Whitey,” starts scratching around in a corner of the attic and makes a surprising discovery –he finds a hidden door to another room, a dark room with huge antique mirror, a light at the top and a chain hanging down on its side. Amazingly, when Max pulls the chain, he completely disappears!
“The light came on with a startlingly bright flash. Then it dimmed down to normal light. Very white light that reflected brightly in the mirror” (18).
His friends Zack, April, and Erin (also called “Mouse” who Max has a crush on) are all shocked. And when he pulls the chain again, the light at the top of the mirror goes out and Max reappears. Somehow this mirror has the ability to make its reflections turn invisible. This leads to an ongoing competition between Max’s friends to see how long they can remain invisible before reappearing. And they are joined by Max’s softball-tossing prankster younger brother Noah (who goes by the name “Lefty” since he is left-handed). But each time Max disappears, he starts to feel dizzy, as if he is dissolving, and it takes longer and longer to reappear. He starts to wonder: Where did this mirror come from? What was it doing up in the attic? Who did it belong to?
Unsurprisingly, hijinks ensue (they prank the neighbor Mr. Evander by suspending his tomatoes in mid-air) but the kids accidentally break the chain and when Max sneaks up later, the Mirror seems to try to pull him inside, whispering his name “Maaaxxx” over and over. And to top things off, Max notices that his friends appear different, their hair is distinct. What is happening?
In a final dramatic conflict, Max’s friends Erin and Zack force Max to turn invisible again (despite his inhibitions) in attempt to break the record by disappearing for about fifteen minutes. But fairly quickly, Max realizes he feels strange, as if he is floating and light. He is suddenly whisked off his feet and sucked into the mirror, where he is sent deep into an eerie, cold, white ivory world –“But I stopped short when I saw the faces in front of me. Distorted, unhappy faces, dozens of them, fun house mirror faces, with enormous, drooping eyes, and tiny mouths tight with sadness… The faces seemed to hover just ahead of me. The gaping eyes stared at me, the tiny mouths moving rapidly as if calling to me, warning me, telling me to get away” (129).
Here, Max is confronted by his maniacal doppelgänger, his own reflection: “Are you so afraid of your other side, Max?… That’s what I am, you know… I am your reflection. Your other side. Your cold side. Don’t be afraid of me. Your friends were not afraid. They made the switch without much of a struggle. Now they are inside the mirror…”
As it turns out, the reflections of all the children have been trying to switch places with them. Terrified, Max runs away as fast as he can, rushing until he finds a way out of the mirror. But back in the real world, Erin and Zack are actually revealed to be reflections (hence why Max realized they were different). They snatch Max and try to force him back into the mirror until his younger brother Lefty suddenly appears in the attic and tosses a softball, shattering the mirror. The reflections of Erin and Zack start screaming as they are shrunk back into the mirror’s glass shards while the read Erin and Zack reappear. All is put to rights… or is it?
Max explains the whole supernatural event that happened to Lefty, then they head outside to play catch together –but Max suddenly notices that Lefty is using his right hand! Is he actually Lefty’s reflection? The book leaves readers on a cliffhanger.
Let’s Get Invisible! is a terrific urban legend with peripheral allusions to H.G. Wells’s classic The Invisible Man, however most of the book is frustratingly redundant as various kids continue to challenge each other to stay invisible for longer and longer periods, until the climactic last few chapters of the book which finally show Goosebumps at its best –a tense conclusion with a wild twist ending. The whole time I was wondering to what extent this old mirror might have been deliberately left behind by Max’s grandparents in the house, or perhaps if Max’s grandfather might have been a magician or something who once used this mirror in his act, however the doppelgänger reflection twist-ending is still surprising and eerie. With plenty of retro ‘90s nostalgia (references to “X-Force graphic novel,” a rented Terminator movie, and a Super Nintendo game) coupled with more wonderful cover art by Tim Jacobus, Let’s Get Invisible! is another terrific installment in the Goosebumps series.
Stine, R.L. Goosebumps: Let’s Get Invisible! Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1993.
This was my introduction to the Goosebumps series! The first one I ever read as a kid. My mother picked it up in town and soon came to regret it, since I was soon reading about monsters and ghouls and such.