Let's be honest: the Goosebumps series is geared toward young readers, and there's nothing literarily mind-blowing here. These aren't books that will be studied in college literature courses or celebrated for revolutionary prose. They're pulpy, quick reads designed to entertain kids with spooky thrills.

It might surprise you to find Goosebumps promoted on a site about moral goodness. My justification is very simple and specific, and it comes from an interview with R.L. Stine that I read years ago. In it, he explains that the scares he chooses for his books are fun scares, not traumatic scares.

He doesn't write about kids' parents getting divorced or real abuse. He writes about fantastical monsters and situations that allow the books to maintain a sense of humor and lightheartedness. There are rules, there are boundaries, and those boundaries don't get crossed.

That concept has become increasingly important to me in the world we live in today, where entertainment constantly seeks to push boundaries and blur the lines. It causes us to lose sight of goodness altogether. R.L. Stine has created a space where kids can experience the thrill of being scared without being traumatized—and that's worth celebrating.

If you're an adult who enjoys literature for kids, you can read through a Goosebumps book in less than two hours. It's a fun activity to do in one sitting when you have the time and are just looking for something silly to enjoy. There are dozens of Goosebumps books out there, and it can be fun collecting them or finding particularly nostalgic titles from the past.

These books aren't trying to be more than what they are—and sometimes, that's exactly what makes them good.