The Incredible Shrinking Fifth Grader (found unreleased Goosebumps Series 2000 book; 2000)

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Th.jpg

The books cover.

Status: Lost

Goosebumps is an extremely popular series of children's horror stories written by R.L Stine and published by Scholastic. The series was a breakout success, with the 62 original Goosebumps books selling a combined 350 million copies between 1992 and 1997, as well as spawning a popular TV adaptation that lasted for 74 episodes over the course of 4 seasons between 1995 and 1998. Because of the brands rampant popularity, many spinoff series were created to capitalize off it. One of the more well known spinoffs was Goosebumps Series 2000. Goosebumps Series 2000 was created to be a successor to the original Goosebumps books, with several of the 25 stories published between 1998 and 2000 being sequels to existing Goosebumps stories. The series was cancelled in 2000 when Stines contract with Scholastic expired. When the cancellation occurred, a 26th book was in the works that ended up never seeing the light of day. This book was The Incredible Shrinking Fifth Grader.

The Plot

Very little is known about the plot of the book, though it's assumed it would have been similar to the film "The Incredible Shrinking Man", which Stine later took inspiration from for his book "The Adventures Of Shrinkman". Some elements from Shrinkman may have also been lifted for The Incredible Shrinking Fifth Grader, such as a part in Shrinkman where the main character is attacked by a white rat, which is similar to what is taking place on the books cover, along with the main character of Shrinkman also being in the fifth grade. It is also theorized that elements from the book were later used in the Goosebumps Hall Of Horrors book Night Of The Giant Everything, though this has never been confirmed. It remains unknown how far this book got into development before being canned however, though it is likely that a draft copy still exists out there somewhere.

The Cover Art

While the book itself has never resurfaced online, the cover art made for it has. Series illustrator Tim Jacobus first revealed the book and the covers existence on March 6th 2017 during a interview in Youch Films Podcast when he was asked what the final Goosebumps cover he worked on was. Three days after the podcast was uploaded to YouTube, Goosebumps wiki user GoosebumpsArt contacted Jacobus about possibly releasing the cover, to which Jacobus obliged, sending him the art later that day.

Gallery

Podcast in which the book is first mentioned (starts at 30:44)

Sources