I Am Slappy's Evil Twin is the third book in the Goosebumps SlappyWorld book series, and the tenth book in the Living Dummy saga. It was published in 2017.
The cover illustration depicts Slappy in a chair, looking worried and confused. His twin brother Snappy is standing behind him, with an evil, menacing look. It is also noticeable that Snappy's shadow is larger than him and also bouncing off the wall.
Blurb[]
Luke Harrison's dad makes horror movies. It is a lot of fun being around such scary stuff—especially when you have your own monster museum at home. But when two ventriloquist dummies join the collection, things get real creepy. Real-life creepy! Slappy and Snappy can walk and talk on their own. And they can make you scream on their own. They have a plan to make everyone's lives miserable. Will Luke be able to stop this terrible twin twosome?
Plot[]
Prologue: 1920[]
Mahar is a puppet maker, and he worked with the magician Kanduu. But Kanduu used magic to bring Mahar's dummy, Mr. Wood, to life. Mahar runs away, and lives a life of his own, creating dummies. A group of townsfolk come in and take his dummy off of his desk and burn it.
Mahar then goes to his backroom and talks to his "real" dummies, Slappy and Snappy. Then, they all laugh at the townsfolk who thought the doll they burned was really causing all the trouble on the farm.
Today[]
Luke Harrison has a science project to build with his sister, Kelly, and his friend, Jamal. Their dad makes horror movies in Hollywood Studios, and he keeps many of his movie props in the basement and in the attic. In the garage, Luke and his friends notice two ventriloquist dummies standing side by side and talking and making jokes. Luke asks if it is his dad pulling a prank, but there is no answer.
When his dad shows up in his car, the dummies sprawl lifelessly on the ground. Luke's dad takes the dummies up the attic and explains that he bought them from an antique store. He plans to sell them to two different buyers after he uses them in his next horror movie. He tells the kids that he will have them in the movie as crowd extras and that the film will be called "I Married a Dummy".
Later, when Luke's dad leaves, the dummies start to tap on the glass, and the kids unlock the glass case that they were in. They said that they heard Luke's dad say that he was going to separate them and that they plan on attempting to hurt him for trying to separate them. Slappy is the dummy with green eyes, and Snappy is the dummy with black eyes. Slappy is mean, but Snappy is always trying to be nice and keeps on telling Slappy to be nicer to people when they talk to him.
But, Slappy doesn't like it when Snappy is being nice. The kids try to videotape the dummies being alive, but every attempt fails. Luke's dad never believes that the dummies are alive, and he keeps growing angrier every time they try to get him to see. Later on in the story, Luke notices that the propane tank is missing from the garage, and he suspects that the dummies took it when his dad put them in the car to go to the film's shooting.
It turns out that Luke's dad put the propane tank further away from the house for safety. When the kids come back, they notice that the dummies hid in the trunk of the car that brought the kids home. The dummies start fighting, and Slappy and Snappy go closer to the propane tank. Slappy then lifts up Snappy and hurls him into the propane tank, which created a fiery explosion that takes out most of their garage.
The dummies fly out in different directions, and then Luke's dad shows up. He tells them that he came home shortly after and that he saw the dummies come to life and started arguing. He apologizes for being so mean to the kids for not believing them. One dummy flew far past the treeline beside the house, and the other one falls in the grass of their backyard. The dad plans to throw the one dummy away, but then the kids tell him that there was a mean dummy and a nice one and that he should check the dummy's eye color.
They find that it is Snappy, the nice one with the black eyes. Once Luke puts Snappy in his glass case, he asks him if he will continue to be a good dummy. But then, Snappy tells them that Slappy thought that it would be funny if he acted nicely as a joke, and he plans on making their life into a living horror movie. Then he asks evilly what there new movie should be called. Then he exclaims, "How about SNAPPY RULES!".
Epilogue[]
Slappy cracks a few jokes, and tells the reader not to worry about him, for he will be back in another Goosebumps book.
International releases[]
Audiobook[]
| Audiobook | Release date | Length | Narrated by | Published by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
September 26, 2017 | 2 hours 50 minutes | Joe Fria, Aaron Landon and P.J Ochlan | Scholastic Inc. |
Pre-release[]
.jpg){kind=link}
Pre-release cover.
The book was first announced by R.L. Stine during an interview in November 2016.[1] It was later confirmed by Scholastic's website in January 2017.[2] The cover was revealed in March, and had several differences from the final version, such as brighter lighting, less-saturated green, and the artwork being in a slightly different position.
Trivia[]
- Luke's father's name is mentioned in this book: David Harrison.
- This title is similar to the sixth Goosebumps Series 2000 book, I Am Your Evil Twin.
- Many of Mr. Harrison's film titles are allusions to classic sci-fi films:
- One of the fictional movies Mr. Harrison made is called It Came from Beneath My Bed!. This is a reference to the Goosebumps book It Came from Beneath the Sink!, whose title itself is a reference to the 1955 film It Came from Beneath the Sea!.
- Another of Mr. Harrison's films, Attack of the 2000-Pound Dachshund, is a reference to the 1958 film Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
- The horror film that Mr. Harrison is making during the book is called I Married a Dummy. This might be a reference to the second Goosebumps Series 2000 book Bride of the Living Dummy.
- It is also a possible reference to the 1958 film I Married a Monster From Outer Space.
- This book references Lego, Chucky, GoPro, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Warner Bros. Studios, and the Walt Disney Studios.
- The words that bring the dummies to life are never mentioned in this book, seeing as Slappy and Snappy are both alive already at the start.
- This is the first book to not feature the words, as all others feature the words.
- This is the first book to feature Mr. Wood since the original Night of the Living Dummy.
- The prologue is primarily written in the present tense, which is rarely done outside of the Give Yourself Goosebumps series.
- There is an error on the last page: When Stine wrote the last sentence (Snappy's line), he forgot to make the S italic.
- The book and its original outline document is thoroughly examined by Stine, in the web course RL Stine Teaches Writing Children's Books.
- Much of this book's prologue is contradicted with the origin story presented in Slappy, Beware!
References in other media[]
- Both Franz Mahar and Kanduu are featured in the 2023 Disney+ Goosebumps series.
References[]
| Goosebumps SlappyWorld series | ||
| #01 Slappy Birthday to You | #08 The Dummy Meets the Mummy! | #15 Judy and the Beast |
| #02 Attack of the Jack | #09 Revenge of the Invisible Boy | #16 Slappy in Dreamland |
| #03 I Am Slappy's Evil Twin | #10 Diary of a Dummy | #17 Haunting with the Stars |
| #04 Please Do Not Feed the Weirdo | #11 They Call Me the Night Howler! | #18 Night of the Squawker |
| #05 Escape from Shudder Mansion | #12 My Friend Slappy | #19 Friiight Night |
| #06 The Ghost of Slappy | #13 Monster Blood Is Back | SE Slappy, Beware! |
| #07 It's Alive! It's Alive! | #14 Fifth-Grade Zombies | |