Read this back when I was nine years old, during a study hall where I hadn't brought a book from home. Even then, I recall thinking how utterly lame and tepid the story was. Seriously, someone thought this even remotely qualified as horror, even for kids?!
Beyond that, it's a generic, unimaginative kid's tale with the morale "be thankful for what you have!" Like the rest of RL Stine's works, it's an utter hack-job that he wrote in under a month. (New Goosebumps were released once a month for 4 years from 1994-1998) As you can imagine, they're repetitive as all hell, and the quality is disastrous.