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Goosebumps HorrorLand #17

The Wizard of Ooze

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Take a little Horror home with you!

While visiting HorrorLand, Marco Gonzales and his friend Gabriella Smith find a rare edition of the The Wizard of Ooze at Jonathan Chiller's HorrorLand shop. The Ooze is a popular graphic novel series about an evil mutant who is made of oil sludge. Marco is excited because in the back of the comic are secret instructions on how to gain your own super powers. Unfortunately, after mentioning the special edition at a comic convention, a couple of unsavory characters want the book, including a guy dressed in an Ooze costume. Marco could really use those super powers right about now!

161 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2010

56 people are currently reading
1615 people want to read

About the author

R.L. Stine

1,683 books18.7k followers
Robert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series.

R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold.

Stine has received numerous awards of recognition, including several Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and Disney Adventures Kids' Choice Awards, and he has been selected by kids as one of their favorite authors in the NEA's Read Across America program. He lives in New York, NY.

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5 stars
363 (35%)
4 stars
277 (27%)
3 stars
270 (26%)
2 stars
76 (7%)
1 star
29 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
Profile Image for clumsyplankton.
1,044 reviews16 followers
October 28, 2023
My sister absolutely adored this book and honestly I found it pretty fun aswell
Profile Image for Sarah.
1,027 reviews266 followers
January 8, 2025
This was not bad. The writing was rough. I find the Horrorland books to be really repetitive overall. I don’t think any goosebumps books could be described as a slow burn, but the Horrorland books really just launch you right into the action.

It’s also a super hero story, which is not my thing. My daughter liked it though and it was fun reading about the character trying to get his different sorts of superpowers.

My daughter enjoyed it more than I did, she gave it 4.5/5 stars. 😂
Profile Image for Austin Smith.
723 reviews66 followers
July 21, 2024
One of those GB books where it feels like Stine is making it up as he goes along. Still, a better comic/superhero story than Dr. Maniac.
Profile Image for Alysia .
339 reviews47 followers
October 19, 2025
i rate these on the goosebumps I get. 3.2 .
2 reviews
October 5, 2015
This book was very good. The begginnig is that these kids are on a ship, and they find a canvel that said horrorland and Gabe said "Hey thats sounds fun." The first game they played was skull toss. When Gab him the skull off a creapy sound started to bust out. The gabe said "Did u waje the dead. Then their parents wonder were they are and the wizard takes them somewere.
Profile Image for C.
3 reviews
October 20, 2011
My daughter loved this book!
Profile Image for Yar Ali.
32 reviews2 followers
May 12, 2023
Easily the worst book in the HorrorLand series so far.
18 reviews
November 15, 2019
The incredible book “Goosebumps: The Wizard of Ooze” by R.L. Stine is about a kid named Marco Gonzales and his friend, Gabriella Smith. They find themselves at horrorland following a horror, Winner Taikall, and win a 10% off coupon for chiller house. Marco is a big fan of The Ooze super villain. He happens to find the original issue. But there are other people looking for it, like a man in the ooze costume. But is it really a costume. I would really recommend this book to people who like fantasy and horror books.
Profile Image for CR.
4,205 reviews42 followers
November 7, 2019
I am so happy that my mom got me into the Goosebumps books. You can read these in any order so don't worry that this one is number 17 in the series. I really hope that this one becomes a movie. My mom said that this used to be on tv as a show so we're looking for those now. The characters in this one were great and I loved the creepy story!
Profile Image for Khushi.
78 reviews36 followers
October 2, 2020
The book was very interesting for me as I read it when I was a child. The reread does point out a few things but I still enjoyed it as much as I did it the first time. Marco's character showed compassion over something in life while Gabrielle was a really twisting girl especially when she agrees that she read the book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Linda.
133 reviews5 followers
February 5, 2011
Very good! Has a lot of super heros in it!
Excellent book!
Profile Image for Heather Herring.
96 reviews
February 6, 2020
Great book! Not surprised either, RL Stine is a great author! I hate Marco's little brother but what am I gonna do about it lol! Amazing book, definently reccomend!
Profile Image for Jay.
192 reviews2 followers
June 4, 2021
The Wizard of Ooze is another story focused on comics books. This is often a pretty good backdrop for Goosebumps. Attack of the Mutant was a very fun book from the original series and Dr. Maniac vs. Robby Schwartz, while a bit up and down, had some really good elements. The Wizard of Ooze it probably a bit closer in quality to Dr. Maniac than Attack of the Mutant.

Much of the book is focused on Marco trying to learn super powers from a comic book. Kids getting super powers reminds me a bit of How I Learned to Fly, which isn't good because that is one of the worst Goosebumps stories ever. But Wizard of Ooze does it MUCH better. Marco learns new skills but they only last for a few moments. As the story progresses, Marco faces off against the Ooze and the Fabulous Flame, who are trying to take something from him.

This is a story that I think would work very well as a first installment of a longer series. I like the idea of kids with super powers. A story line with Marco, Gabriella, and his brother Zeke using the powers from the comic book to fight villains has the potential to be really good.

Weirdo Halloween is an interesting and fun Goosebumps book. The first thing you'll notice is the length. The typical Goosebumps book is between 130 and 140 pages. But Weirdo Halloween checks in at 214 pages. As far as I know, this is the longest Goosebumps book ever. This is the result of a much longer HorrorLand story at the end.

In Weirdo Halloween, Chris and Meg bring back a doll called Floig from HorrorLand. But the real "villain" of the story is Bim, a small alien from the planet Werid. I put villain in quotations because he isn't much of a villain. Really, he just causes some mischief. He's funny though and his ending is really humorous. It turns out he came to Earth looking for Floig. When he finds it, he promptly goes back to his planet. Unfortunately, he invited his fellow weirdos to Earth for back rubs and fresh meat.

My favorite part of the book though is the time in HorrorLand. Of all the storylines in Goosebumps, HorrorLand is my favorite. It was really entertaining to see the theme park celebrating Halloween. We get to see different attractions as the story goes on. Anytime I get more depth to HorrorLand Park I'm happy.

So where does this rank? Well, the lack of a real villain hurts it a bit. While Bim was fun, I wish Chris and Meg had been in a bit more danger throughout. The HorrorLand portion is really good though and I hope we see more of this.

1. Revenge of the Living Dummy
2. Escape from HorrorLand
3. Who’s Your Mummy
4. When the Ghost Dog Howls
5. Say Cheese and Die Screaming
6. Creep from the Deep
7. Weirdo Halloween
8. Dr. Maniac vs. Robby Schwartz
9. My Friends Call Me Monster
11. The Wizard of Ooze
11. Help! We Have Strange Powers
12. Heads You Lose
13. The Streets of Panic Park
14. Monster Blood for Breakfast
15. The Scream of the Haunted Mask
16. Welcome to Camp Slither
17. Little Shop of Hamsters
2 reviews
January 24, 2019
The book Goosebumps Horror land: The Wizard Of Ooze by R.L Stine is a chilling/Suspenseful and thrilling story about a boy named Marco who is a die hard fan of the ooze comic book. He finds the super-rare edition of the ooze comic at the Chiller house gift shop at a carnival at Horror land, then he is then chased and surrounded/ stalked by real life oozing monstrous villains trying to takeover is comic collection and everywhere he goes he is forced to dress up like a monster, if he is not disguised then he will be targeted by the evil oozing mutants. Marco and his sister Gabriela cannot stay close to the monsters because the more they are around them, the faster they will start acting like the monsters. If Marco leaves his sister and is around a monster then the sister will not know it’s him and the monsters trick her into thinking it’s him but it’s not and she gets trapped and put into the comic.

Later on in the story, Marco then earns a lot of tickets from the games and saves them up and then goes into the “Room of Terror” and plays a big prize winning game, he then gets trapped in there and finds out that he has a choice to either win and save his sister or lose and she stays trapped and avoided forever and loses the comic and his sister turns into a monster because of the spell casting on her from the oily black and green ooze. The beginning of this story is obviously an intro and shows how Marco and Gabriela grew up and got to this carnival and then the mood of the story changes so fast, because the suspense rises and the climax comes quick after the intro then you would think that everything is okay, and then everything gets bad again and then goes downhill for while and increases suspense for awhile.

I definitely think that this book is for people who really live or want to read a book related to the genres including horror, suspense, thriller, and mystery. It turns out that Marco is a really brave person in this story and sticks up for what is right and does not give up no matter the circumstance. Those are good lessons and morals i got from this story.

Profile Image for Nat Walsh.
8 reviews
August 30, 2020
The story was entertaining. ^.^ I really enjoyed it. And even though I’m an adult, this one sorta creeped me out. In a good way. I’ve been reading Goosebumps since I was a kid back in the late 90’s and still do to this day. And this is by far one of my most favorites.

SPOILER:

Only thing I didn’t understand was why Stine had Marco tell Gabriella about the Ooze and the Fabulous Flame (Sammy) threatening and attacking him since they want the comic book and Flame wanted the bookmark? And she didn’t believe him? She believed and practiced finding her sueperpower, why would she not believe Marco about the Ooze and Flame?
The author could’ve had Marco not tell her and think she wouldn’t believe him just like he said that Zeke wouldn’t believe him.
That’s just my opinion.

Other than that, this is a great story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Yolanda Sfetsos.
Author 78 books238 followers
October 14, 2022
I actually enjoyed a bunch of the earlier HorrorLand Goosebumps series, but these later ones are really NOT grabbing me.

Marco gets his hands on a rare edition of his favourite comic book, The Ooze, at the Chiller House gift shop, and when he takes it home things don't go well...

Blah, blah, blah. I really couldn't get into this book because I found the story quite dull, and the characters even duller. Oh well.
Profile Image for Kushan Sharma.
3 reviews
November 18, 2020
Very interesting and it will keep you hooked . The story is kinda fantasy and has no ghosts but it is an amazing read . The twists at the end will blow you up . A must read for fans of Goosebumps series .
Profile Image for Jamie Uribe.
266 reviews1 follower
March 16, 2023
What a good book.

So you're following a boy named Marco. And he is a big comic book nerd. So you go through a journey with him to find out if he has powers or not.

He is also trying to get a book back to the ooze, and does he find out if ooze is really and superhero or a villain?
450 reviews
January 21, 2025
I really enjoyed the like montage of scenes where Marco was testing out superpowers. The book dragged slightly towards the last 40 pages but it picked up again near the ending (although it did infuriate me when Zeke was being a prick again).
Profile Image for Thomas-James.
78 reviews
Read
April 10, 2020
Let's just say... it's sludgy and slick and oily and gross all at once!
Profile Image for Aleisha Rose.
155 reviews
May 7, 2020
This book took me about an hour and a half to read. It is such a quick read and I liked revisiting Goosebumps
Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews

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