Rotten School

About the Rotten School series

Rotten School is R.L. Stine's answer to a pure comedy series, trading Goosebumps' scares for the gross-out humor and social scheming of a boarding school for spoiled rich kids. Narrator Bernie Bridges is the school's self-appointed con artist and hustler, forever cooking up money-making schemes, elaborate pranks, and revenge plots against his nemesis Sherman Oaks, all while trying (and usually failing) to impress the girls of neighboring Rotten School dorm.

Each book is a short, illustrated chapter book built around one of Bernie's plans going hilariously wrong -- entering a smelling contest, running a barf-inducing snack stand, staging a haunted-house prank -- narrated in Bernie's boastful, self-deluding first-person voice with black-and-white illustrations by Trip Park throughout. It's a lighter, sillier register than anything else in Stine's catalogue, aimed at younger middle-grade readers who want jokes and gross-out set pieces rather than horror.

Running 16 books from 2005 to 2008, Rotten School gave Stine -- best known almost exclusively as a horror writer by that point -- a rare chance to publish a straightforwardly comic series, and it remains one of his most purely funny, least-referenced works outside the Goosebumps and Fear Street brands that define his reputation.

How to read this series

Read Rotten School in publication order (used here), starting with The Big Blueberry Barf-Off! (2005) -- Bernie Bridges' ongoing rivalries and running jokes build slightly across the series, but each book is a self-contained scheme-of-the-week story, so a new reader can jump in anywhere without confusion.

This entry covers the complete 16-book series (2005-2008), all illustrated by Trip Park. It's a standalone comedy series, unconnected to R.L. Stine's horror work in Goosebumps and Fear Street.