Goosebumps #21: Go Eat Worms!

Todd absolutely loves worms. After every storm, he heads outside with his friend Danny to his prime digging spot and digs up dozens of worms. His sister Regina and her friend Beth hate it because he keeps showing them the worms and acting like your normal pesky little brother. They go outside to dig up some more worms, and they notice the ground shaking. Thinking that it's an earthquake, they run inside screaming but no one else felt anything.

He later sees this rich kid Patrick in the same spot. Regina explains that Patrick wants to do a science project on worms, which pisses off Todd. The big science fair is coming up, and the winner gets a new computer. He decides to sneak over to Patrick's house to see his project. Regina gives him the address, but it winds up just being a prank, and they end up at an abandoned house.

Danny thinks that they should both work on the worm project, and when Todd refuses, Danny blows up a bunch of balloons and creates a solar system. Todd keeps trying to get info out of Patrick, and when he refuses, he heads back to the digging spot. They experience another tremor that no one else feels, and they decide to just ignore it.

The day of the science fair arrives, and Todd shows up with his worm house that he made. Patrick then walks up with a super big worm skyscraper. Regina and Beth create a paper mache bird, and Todd sneaks off to see it. When the judges open its mouth, they find a bunch of live worms inside. He starts laughing and runs back to his spot. The judges completely ignore his project, but ooh and ah over Patrick's project. In the end, Danny actually wins the science fair.

A few days later, Todd starts cutting up some worms, and Regina points out that it looks like the worms are watching him. He ignores her, but then he notices that they really do seem to be watching him. When he puts on his hat, he finds worms inside, and he finds another crawling on his face when he wakes up. The worms crawl into his sandwich and he loses his mind.

His mom gets so tired of hearing about the worms that she makes him move them into the basement, but that doesn't stop the weird activity. He sneaks downstairs to the basement to watch and see what happens, and his dad ends up interrupting him. He heard noises from the basement and came down to check it out, thinking it was a burglar.

Todd keeps sneaking around and hears Regina, Patrick, and Beth gossiping about him. It turns out that they created a funny comic strip with him as a worm. After a few more days, he discovers that his sister created all of the pranks with the worms to get back at him. He and Danny dig up a bunch of new worms, and Todd says that he has a surefire way to get back at her.

The ground starts shaking and a big ass worm comes up through the hole in the ground. It grabs Todd and starts dragging him down, and when Danny tries to help, he starts going down too. Regina and Beth come by with their fake bird, and the shadow of the bird causes the worm to take off running. Todd is so scarred that he decides on a new hobby: mounting butterflies. While working in his room, he sees a shadow on his wall. When he looks up, he sees a giant butterfly coming at him and holding an enormous silver pin.

*Danny's project shouldn't even place, let alone win. He literally blows up balloons and sticks them to posterboard with the names underneath, and a few of the balloons pop before judging.

*What exactly is oaktag? A lot of these books refer to oaktag as what students use for presentations, but we always just used posterboard.

*I don't get the big hoopla over the worms in the bird's mouth. The judges are so disgusted that they walk away after lecturing the girls, but it kind of makes sense.

*Todd actually eats half of a worm that his sister stuck in his peanut butter sandwich. He doesn't get sick or throw up, which seems like the normal reaction, but he doesn't eat anymore either.

*The whole giant worm thing was kind of anticlimactic. Considering the number of times they felt the ground shake, it was a cop out to have the giant worm only cover two pages.