“The Monster Blood! It’s growing again!”
The third installment in the quirky “Monster Blood” saga, Monster Blood III sees the return of Evan Ross, his dog Trigger, and his friend Andy now living in Atlanta (after the outrageous events of Cuddles the Hamster in Monster Blood II). The bully Conan Barber, or “Conan The Barbarian,” returns in this one for more unpleasant shenanigans (“he had to be the biggest meanest kid in Atlanta. Maybe in the universe”), but the new twist this time around is that Evan is saving up to buy a walkman so he starts babysitting his obnoxious cousin named “Kermit,” an oddball kid and aspiring chemist, a “genius” who repeatedly causes problems and then tattles to his mom about it.
Kermit is a wholly annoying character throughout the book, but he always seems to be busily working in his stench-filled basement laboratory, developing various chemical concoctions. At one point he has a vile of liquid that shrinks the bully Conan’s shirt, at another he creates a potion that winds up causing a ruckus when his huge sheepdog “Dogface” starts hiccupping and running around causing chaos. It quickly becomes apparent that Kermit is trying to play mean practical jokes by sabotaging Evan and Andy at every turn.
One day, after Kermit deliberately gives Andy the wrong answers to math equations at school (though he uses a mixture to miraculously shrink a mosquito bite on Andy’s arm), and then feeds Evan and Andy a “laughing mixture” inside orange soda that causes problems with Conan, Andy suggests they use some Monster Blood to get back at Kermit. At first, Evan outrightly rejects the idea (he has been having nightmares about the Monster Blood) but then he finally agrees. Apparently, Andy’s parents have sent her another canister of Monster Blood from Europe for some reason (a retread of the same plot device in Monster Blood II).
Thus, Andy slips a tiny bit of the familiar “green gunk” in a blue container into one of Kermit’s mixtures: a bowl of yellow dough… But oops! It rapidly starts expanding and gurgling and exploding. Nearby, Evan has been eating a chocolate bar and he accidentally consumes some of the Monster Blood as it goes flying toward him. Predictably, Evan starts growing and growing until he can barely fit inside the house (he grows larger than Cuddles did in the previous book because apparently this he consumed a newer, fresher bit of Monster Blood). Evan starts crushing cars and fences in the city, while Andy and Kermit start panicking. Pretty soon, Evan is over nine feet tall and he goes running through the city, causing mayhem and frightening people, including Conan The Barbarian, before finally realizing that the only way to bring himself back down to his normal size is to use one of Kermit’s chemical concoctions: the same one that shrunk Andy’s mosquito bite.
At first, Kermit gets the mixture wrong and Evan turns blue, then he grows feathers, before finally getting it right. And after a loud “pop” Evan finally shrinks back down to his normal size, just moments before the police can catch him. He and Andy breathe a sigh of relief… but later that night, Evan awakens in the night to find that he is still shrinking! Kermit gave him too strong of a concoction and now he is tiny. Evan’s dog Trigger closes his jaws around him and carries a tiny Evan into his parents’ bedroom.
“‘Uh… Dad? Dad?’ Evan squeaked up at him. ‘Dad? It’s me? Do you see me? Dad? Uh… I think we have a little problem!'” (126).
My Thoughts on Monster Blood III
I am not sure why the “Monster Blood” series needed four books in the original Goosebumps canon because these stories are just fodder for ridicule. By the third installment, the schtick has now run its course. Monster Blood III is still a fun gimmicky children’s story, I suppose, but it offers nothing new. First, we saw Evan’s dog Trigger swell up to the size of a horse and run amok, then we saw the class hamster grow unnaturally large and wreak havoc on the school. Now, Stine has made Evan the victim of Monster Blood.
The introduction of Kermit in this book is appropriately infuriating and the bully Conan Barber (“Conan The Barbarian”) is as awful as ever, but the part of the book that really stuck out to me was Evan’s jump-scare dream in the opening chapter. It is a grotesque nightmare in which the Monster Blood is vividly depicted as a trembling shivering blob making grotesque sucking sounds. It is at least a mildly interesting attempt at grotesque horror a la The Blob. Overall, I’d say Monster Blood III is on par with the first book, and both are just a notch below the second, though none of these Monster Blood books are stand-outs in the Goosebumps canon. At least Tim Jacobus’s cover artwork is memorable, complete with his familiar Chuck Taylor converse shoes!
Corresponding Episode Review
The Fox Kids television show never made an episode for Monster Blood III.
Stine, R.L. Monster Blood III. Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1995.