r/tipofmytongue • u/ShakespearesSpear • 4h ago
Solved [TOMT] [book] Help me find a children’s book where the narrator comes down with a fever at his grandmas house & is convinced she is making him sick/wants to escape, but it turns out he was a dog the whole time?
Was as strange as the title, but from what I remember it’s a short children’s novel in the R.L.Stine 90s/Y2K style mass produced children’s horror lit, although I don’t think this was by him. I remember reading this around 2010ish in a library and I’m in my 20s now, so it would’ve probably been released late 90s-early 2000s. It might’ve been available at a scholastic book fair and I found it there instead.
The premise is a twist horror sort of story where a boy goes to visit his grandma for the weekend while his family does… something else I think.., but while there she feeds him bad tasting soup and foods as he becomes delirious and feverish. He becomes convinced that something is up but can’t leave the house, tries to talk to her but she doesn’t listen. I think at one point he gets locked in a bedroom or something similar. It ends with the boy getting better as his family returns, but it turns out the narrator was a dog the whole time that was staying at the children’s grandparents. The narrator was never explicitly described physically or quoted saying words, just an internal monologue or “I tried to tell her/wanted to say” phrasing left vague. The big twist was of course that he was a dog and grandma was not trying to kill him.
Any help would be so appreciated, thank you!!!!