“Keep your eye on the birdie!”
Michael Webster is about to celebrate his twelfth birthday party, joined by many of his friends from school, but his obnoxious seven-year-old sister, Tara, keeps ruining everything by pulling “stupid tricks” on him. As is the case with every sibling, Tara simply makes Michael’s life a living hell. She publicly mocks him in front of his crush (Mona) and later she arranges for three girls, Mona, Ceecee, and Rosie, see him in his underwear. Meanwhile, every time Tara harasses Michael, their parents seem to berate and blame Michael (almost to the point of abusiveness). It’s a horrendous situation for Michael and he surely would have been better off without a sibling.
Shortly thereafter, his father, Herman Webster, arranges for an antique cuckoo clock to be delivered to the house from Anthony’s Antiques, a local antique store. When it is unboxed, Michael is awestruck to find it is a big beautiful antique cuckoo clock that Herman has wanted for fifteen years. However, it apparently has a tiny mysterious flaw (according to Anthony) but nobody in the family seems to know what it is. Michael notices there is a separate miniature clock with gold hands next to the big one. This smaller clock tells the year, beginning in 1800 and stopping at 2000. And when the clock chimes there is a large cuckoo bird that pops out. Michael’s father explains that this cuckoo clock comes from the Black Forest of Germany. Legend has it this is supposed to be a magic clock that can even travel backward in time.
Later that night at midnight, Michael sneaks down to the den to tamper with the cuckoo clock, hoping to requite his tormenting little sister. When the clock chimes and the cuckoo bird pops out, Michael quickly grabs it and twists the birds head around backwards, chuckling to himself. But then something goes awry and Michael wakes up to find he is reliving his entire nightmare birthday all over again. He realizes that time is moving backward! Despite this being an extraordinary supernatural experience, Michael seems mostly unfazed. But when he tries to find the cuckoo clock to turn the bird’s head back around, he realizes that his father hasn’t actually bought the clock yet. This poses a problem. And to make matters worse, every few hours Michael notices that he seems to be growing younger and younger, traveling back further and further, first to third grade, then all the way back to being a baby.
After what feels like an endless series of misadventures as a baby, Michael finally gets his parents to take him back to Anthony’s Antiques where the cuckoo clock still sits unpurchased (since Michael has traveled backward in time, his father still has yet to buy the clock). Despite being a twelve-year-old trapped in the body of a baby, Michael manages to mess with the clock while his parents have an argument and he suddenly goes forward in time in a blinding flash of light, returning to his present-day much to his relief… only now he has realized the clock’s flaw. It is missing the year 1988 on its list of years, and 1988 was the same year his horrendous sister “Tara the Terrible” was born. Rather than immediately going backward in time to rescue Tara, Michael decides to leave it alone for now and enjoy the bliss of being an only child.
My Thoughts on The Cuckoo Clock of Doom
A ridiculous twist on the tale of Benjamin Button with just a dash of Groundhog Day thrown in there, The Cuckoo Clock of Doom is a wild, outrageous Goosebumps book that starts with a compelling enough premise about an antique cuckoo clock that is rumored to possess ancient dark powers, but this book quickly turns into a ludicrous time-travel story that goes completely off the rails. I’d say A Night in Terror Tower, the book immediately preceding The Cuckoo Clock of Doom in the series, pulls off the time-travel plot far more convincingly. Plus, Michaels’s abusive, gaslighting familial dynamic (in which his parents only ever seem to sympathize with his sister Tara) is a little too much to stomach. Not the worst but far from the best, The Cuckoo Clock of Doom is worth skipping.
Corresponding Episode Review
The television episode for “The Cuckoo Clock of Doom” is fairly silly and childish, and the acting is atrocious, but I will admit this one is a bit more intense than the book. The main child actor, John White, also appeared in the Goosebumps episode “The Haunted Mask II” and many of these early kids’ television shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Tales From the Cryptkeeper, as well as The Magic School Bus and The Adventures of Shirley Holmes. He later went on to appear in the American Pie film series.
Stine, R.L. The Cuckoo Clock of Doom. Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1995.