The Cuckoo Clock of Doom
| File:The Cuckoo Clock of Doom.jpg | |
| Author | R. L. Stine |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Tim Jacobus |
| Language | English |
| Series | Goosebumps |
| Genre | Horror fiction, Children's literature |
| Publisher | Scholastic |
Publication date | February 1995 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 118 p. |
| Preceded by | A Night in Terror Tower |
| Followed by | Monster Blood III |
The Cuckoo Clock of Doom is the twenty-eighth book in R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series.
Synopsis
The main character is Michael Webster, a 12-year-old boy, telling the story from his perspective. He has a crush on Mona Deaton, his classmate. He begins by talking about his sister, Tara, who is always lying and getting him into trouble. Unfortunately, Tara never gets blamed for these things. On his 12th birthday, Tara ruins everything; she scratches his present, a new bicycle, tells his crush that Mike likes her (as well as opening all of Michael's presents ahead of him, including a CD she says that has great love songs on it), and purposely trips him while he is carrying his birthday cake, resulting in the cake splattering over Michael's face.
A few days later, his father purchases an antique cuckoo clock from a local store, Anthony's Antiques, that is supposed to have one flaw. He'd been admiring the clock for fifteen years. It's been said that if a person can figure out the clock's secret, it can be used to go back in time. Tara fools around with the clock, and her father gets very angry. This gives Michael an idea on how to get back at Tara. That night, when the clock strikes midnight, Michael sneaks downstairs and touches the cuckoo's head and twists it around backwards. He hopes this will get Tara in trouble for sure. Apparently, this little act is the secret to going back in time. Michael wakes up and realizes that it's his 12th birthday all over again. At midnight, he tries to turn the head back to normal, but he realizes that the clock hasn't been bought yet. He heads back to bed, and wakes up a few days earlier. He has a generally bad day at school, having getting beaten up by Kevin Flowers, after Tara sneaks Kevin's favorite cap into Michael's backpack. He starts to worry, and tries to tell his family. They just make a joke of it and say he is imagining things.
He realizes the days are getting worse. When he wakes up the next morning, he doesn't notice anything different. But when he walks in the door of his classroom, he realizes the truth: he's back in third grade. He is disgusted at his immature friends, and goes to sleep thinking that he might be erased for good. The next day after that, Michael is in second grade. That afternoon, he heads over to Anthony's Antiques, only to find it closed. He attempts to break a window with a brick, but his dad catches him and takes him home, critising him of going on the bus alone. The next day, he wakes up in kindergarten. He is bored and inattentive, faced with problems such as tying his shoes (and since he still has the brain and mind power of a 12-year-old, he does it very easily). A day earlier, he even goes on to break his arm again as he did in nursery school.
The next morning, Mike wakes up in what he thinks is prison, until he realizes he can barely walk. He soon realizes he's a baby, wearing a diaper. Unable to escape his crib because of his weakened muscles, and unable to talk properly, he feels trapped. After a bottle-feeding, a diaper change, and a minute in the baby pen, his mother takes him to see his "daddy" at work, and Michael realizes this is his chance. His parents are heading into Anthony's Antiques. While his parents look for a new kitchen table, he crawls quickly towards the cuckoo clock. Just as it rings for a 12th time, he grabs the head and twists it forward again, then sets the year dial to 1995 (if he had only twisted the head foword, Michael would have only made time start to go foward, and he would have to relive his life day by day from that day as a weak, little baby foward). There is a bright flash, and Michael is taken back to the morning of his 12-year-old birthday.
Not quite the present, but close enough, Michael is almost happy to see Tara again, but he can't seem to find her. During his birthday without Tara, his bike isn't scratched, his birthday cake is actually eaten and Mona's best friend tells Michael that Mona has a crush on him. A few days later, the clock is delivered and Michael finds the clock's defect, its year dial skips 1988 (the year Tara was born), somehow preventing Tara from coming into existence. However, Michael assures that later he'll go back and get Tara (though, given the humiliation Tara put Michael through earlier in the book, it can be deduced that Michael will never go back in time to get his sister back).
Tagline
Keep Your Eye On the Birdie!
Book description
Don't Beat the Clock!
Tara the Terrible. That's what Michael Webster calls his bratty little sister. She loves getting Michael in trouble. Making his life miserable. Things couldn't get any worse. Then Mr. Webster brings home the antique cuckoo clock. It's old. It's expensive. And Mr. Webster won't let anyone touch it. Poor Michael. He should have listened to his dad. Because someone put a spell on the clock. A strange spell. A dangerous spell. And now Michael's life will never be the same again....
TV adaptation
The television adaptation for the Goosebumps show follows a similar plot. However, this one has Michael waking up on his 12th birthday after turning the head, then on his 6th birthday the next day. After that, he becomes a baby, and the rest of the plot follows. During the 12th birthday party, instead of Tara opening all his presents, Michael opens them, including a CD from Mona saying he doesn't have this one. Then Tara explains to everybody that he thought it was stupid and threw it out. Similarly, instead of him having a nightmare about his horrible birthday party, he has a nightmare about the clock chasing him with an evil cackling Tara's head coming out of the cuckoo door. Also, the room that would've later become Tara's room is not a guest room, it is Mr. Webster's home office (as 6-year-old Michael notices when looking for Tara, and then Michael is shocked again to see the room still as an office when he is 12 again). Michael also describes the clock in the book version with gold hands and Roman numerals, though in the TV version, the hands and Roman numerals are black (and there are minute-marker numbers above the main numerals as well, such as 5, 10, 15, etc.)
Trivia
- This is one of the few books in the Goosebumps series in which the twist ending actually benefits the main character.
- The clock appears also in the Give Yourself Goosebumps book, Tick Tock, You're Dead! and in The Knight in Screaming Armour.
- The book was re-released in 2003. To reflect this, the events in the book were re-written so that they would occur eight years earlier.