The Goosebumps book about the evil librarian.
Lucy Dark loves monster stories. She's always scaring her little brother by telling him there's a monster hiding behind everything they see, and the only books she wants to read for her local library's summer reading programme are the ones about monsters. Unfortunately for her, monsters are about to get a whole lot more real. She discovers that Mr. Mortman, the librarian, is a monster himself. To make things worse, nobody believes Lucy. She'll need to find some way to prove she's telling the truth about this monster before it's too late.
It was adapted into episode 4 of the first season of the 1995 TV series, with a novelization based on the episode being released as book 15 of the Goosebumps Presents series.
The book provides examples of:
- Affably Evil: Mr. Mortman, who was perfectly nice and friendly aside from being a monster who ate flies, and only tried to kill Lucy when she kept trying to expose his secret.
- All There in the Manual: The Collector's Cap books explain that the Dark family is from Romania and left due to all the other monsters living there.
- Anti-Sneeze Finger: During her prolonged time at hiding from Mr. Mortman in a shadowy bookshelf corner, Lucy could feel her nose start to twitch from the dust, and she realizes she's about to blow. She presses two fingers under her nose to stop herself.
- Artistic License – Education: Mr. Mortman assigning Huckleberry Finn and Frankenstein for a preteen to read as part of a summer program. He also buys her Blatant Lies that she liked the description for Huckleberry Finn the best. Lucy is established as Brilliant, but Lazy, and usually, those books are assigned at a high school level, if not college. The TV series fixes this by having Lucy check out Frankenstein with no reading program and half-heartedly receive recommendations from Mr. Mortman.
- Asshole Victim: Lucy's parents, who are revealed as monsters, gruesomely devour the villain, much to their children's delight.
- Blinding Camera Flash: Once a hiding Lucy takes a photograph of Mr. Mortman while he's in monster form, the camera flash startles him and temporarily rendered him sightless. Lucy has to run away while a blinded Mr. Mortman tries to find her.
- Child Eater: Mr. Mortman chases Lucy with the intention of catching her and eating her.
- Crying Wolf: The whole book is about a girl who constantly tells monster tales to freak people out. Eventually, she finds out that the librarian is a monster, but nobody believes her. Of course, this Aesop is a bit undermined by the inherent nature of it — people may believe you if you say there's a wolf in town, but a bug-eyed monster? Unlikely in any case. It turns out that Her parents — as well as her and her brother — are actually monsters, which she didn't know at the time and they had been acting like they didn't believe her when they were planning to eat the librarian.
- Deus ex 'Scuse Me: At one point while running from Mr. Mortman, who had just been deprived of his vision, Lucy accidentally collides with a book cart which made her susceptible to the monster's fury. But then the library telephone rang, which distracts Mr. Mortman, causing Lucy to successfully escape from his grasp.
- Exact Eavesdropping: Aaron happened to be inside the library, and saw an unaware Mr. Mortman transform and go after Lucy. This finally convinced him that she was telling him the truth about this librarian all along.
- Gut Feeling: Upon re-entering the library to retrieve her rollerblades, Lucy can't help but feel an ominous pressure inside of her that something terrible is lurking around the corner, to which she refers to as a "premonition". Indeed, she soon finds out that the sole librarian in the building is a beastly creature.
- Hey, Wait!: After barely escaping from a suspicious Mr. Mortman, Lucy runs back home in a panic. But a few minutes later, she's shocked to find none other than the librarian himself at the door asking for her. It turns out that he came here because she left her backpack at the library, and went to the address that was written on there to give to her.
- Hypocritical Humor: Lucy once overhears an elderly lady looking after her granddaughter, Samantha, as they peruse through the library. The woman starts talking to Mr. Mortman, and then Samantha loudly tells her that they're in a library, so they're supposed to whisper.
- Let Me Get This Straight...: Aaron says this to Lucy when she is trying to convince him that a large sassafras tree near her house has a monster on top of there, and is asking him to poke at it with a rake to prove it.
- Mama Bear/Papa Wolf: After Lucy's parents actually know that Mr. Mortman is a monster who's trying to eat their daughter, their solution to the problem is to eat him alive. They also did this because too many monsters at one place endangers The Masquerade to humans.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: Literally, as Lucy's monster parents eat Mr. Mortman, who is also a monster.
- Nonindicative Name: In-Universe, where Lucy's family lives in the town of Timberland Falls. But its name is this trope — as Lucy herself puts it, "There are a few forests outside of town, but nobody cuts the trees down for timber. And there aren't any falls. So, why Timberland Falls?"
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: As Mr. Mortman first arrives at Lucy's house and starts talking to a frightened Lucy, she blurts out to him that her parents aren't home, so it's just her and her brother currently at home. She immediately and internally demands herself why she would say that to him.
- Our Monsters Are Weird: Mr. Mortman, a bug-eyed monster disguised as a human who devours strange creatures.
- Tomato Surprise: The end reveals that not only is the librarian a monster, so are Lucy and her whole family.
- Weaksauce Weakness: While Mr. Mortman chases Lucy through the library, she accidentally knocks over the card catalogue. While he may be a monster, Mr. Mortman is also a librarian, and therefore stops to organize the cards, allowing Lucy to escape.
