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Piano Lessons Can Be Murder (1993) by R. L. Stine ⭐⭐⭐
I read Piano Lessons Can Be Murder for a book club. It is the 13th entry in the Goosebumps series.
Jerry loves to play practical jokes, and the book opens on one of his hilarious stunts, an unbelievable one that shows his parents to be the most gullible adults one might ever encounter. Seriously, they think that a dust bunny is a mouse.
Moving along…. The family has just moved into a new house which is old and kind of creepy. They discover a nice piano in the attic, and Jerry keeps hearing music coming from it in the middle of the night. He investigates it, and sees that a ghost girl is playing it. She warns him to stay away. The parents don’t hear any of this, and when Jerry complains about the music and being scared, they think he’s joking, because, you know, he’s a jokester. They figure he’s just really interested in the piano and offer him piano lessons.
He thinks this might be a pretty cool idea, and soon Dr. Shreek, his music instructor comes to the house to meet him. He says he has beautiful hands, and invites him to the school.
The school is in the middle of nowhere, but he takes a couple lessons, anyway. Jerry soon realizes that there’s something really weird about this place and his creepy instructor, who keeps commenting on his wonderful, excellent, beautiful hands. Find out what happens when you read Piano Lessons Can Be Murder.
Read this book, but make sure that you do not watch the Goosebumps episode first. This is the absolute worst Goosebumps episode I’ve ever seen. It turns the whole story into a stupid, painful to watch teleplay that was totally half-assed. Like, why did they even make this series if they were going to be totally idiotic about it?
I liked the book overall, but I didn’t like the main character. He was a kind of a jerk with his stupid practical jokes, and all it got him was the Boy Who Cried Wolf treatment.
Originally, this book was going to be called Guitar Lessons Can Be Murder, because R. L. Stine’s son was taking guitar lessons at the time. He was told there wasn’t anything creepy about guitars, so it was changed to piano. I have to agree with them.
When I read that the book was inspired by the 1953 film The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T., I was not surprised in the least. In fact, I thought of this movie while reading it!
I’d recommend this book to young readers that love to read about ghosts. This could also be a little more scary for the sensitive reader. But, if someone is sentitive to these kinds of things, they probably won’t be reading Goosebumps, would they?
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