A middle grade horror novel, Night of the Living Dummy follows sisters Lindy and Kris after Lindy finds a ventriloquist’s dummy and what begins as a game turns into a series of strange and increasingly disturbing events. The book blends children’s suspense, creepy humor, and classic Goosebumps horror, using sibling rivalry, jealousy, and the fear of an ordinary object taking on a life of its own to build tension inside a familiar home setting. Written for readers drawn to scary chapter books, 1990s children’s horror, and fast-moving stories in which doubt slowly gives way to dread, the novel keeps returning to one unsettling possibility: what if the dummy is not just part of the act?
Author: R. L. Stine
Publisher: Scholastic
Publication year: 1993
Pages: 134
Target age: 8–12
