R.L. Stine Responds To Reports of GOOSEBUMPS Revisions Saying Its Not True; But Scholastic Did Make Them Years Ago

It was recently reported that children’s horror writer R.L. Stine was revising many of his old books, editing any negative references to ethnicity, weight, and mental health. There’s been a lot of this going on recently with Penguin editing Roald Dahl’s books and Ian Fleming Publications Ltd editing the James Bond novels.

It was reported that Stine was making all the changes himself, and there have been over 100 edits so far. One example of a revision that was made was in a book where aliens abducted large people where in the original book they were described as having “at least six chins,” the revised version now says the people are “at least six feet six.”

Well, it turns out that none of this is true. Stine shot down the rumors himself responding to fans on Twitter, saying: "This story is false. I have never changed a word in a Goosebumps book." In another tweet, Stine said: "The stories aren't true. I've never changed a word in Goosebumps. Any changes were never shown to me."

But then, Scholastic shared a statement regarding the edits to the book series saying that there were edits made, but they were made years ago: That statement reads: “For more than 30 years, the Goosebumps series has brought millions of kids to reading through humor with just the right amount of scary. Scholastic takes its responsibility seriously to continue bringing this classic adolescent brand to each new generation. When re-issuing titles several years ago, Scholastic reviewed the text to keep the language current and avoid imagery that could negatively impact a young person’s view of themselves today, with a particular focus on mental health.”

With the way that Stein is responding to these reports, it sounds to me like he was never shown or told about any of these edits that were made, so that’s interesting.

One of the other changes pointed out was in the reissue of the book Don't Go to Sleep!, which has been updated so that the book Anna Karenina is no longer referred to as "girl's stuff" and is instead now referred to as "not interesting."

It’s been a long time since I’ve read any of the Goosebumps books and if I did read them now, I wouldn’t even remember how they were written before. I just think it’s interesting that while Stine is denying it and was never shown to him, Scholastic is like, yeah, we already did it.