When I was a kid, I loved these books. I read them like crazy, couldn't get enough of them. When I became a step father I was dismayed to find that they weren't being published anymore and I had to buy on Ebay. It was a shame, imo, that such great books which directly led to my love of reading weren't around anymore.
Imagine my suprise this week while Christmas shopping for my nephews to find a whole shelf of these books. Apparently, the folks that published them the first time have recognized a demand for their books as children who read them originally now have their own kids. SO they have gone through, revamped the stories a bit, and are putting them back in print. There's about 20 or so out now. Of course I snapped a few up for my nephew, but I'm considering buying the whole series for myself as well. The only bummer is my kids are now past the age for these books.
If you never read them the first time, you should check them out. They are geared toward young adults, but are still really fun books even for adults.
Posts: 1042 | Registered: Jan 2001
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I didn't cheat, but i always went back and did the othe choices. I would hold the pages with my fingers.
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That one about vampires in space scared me SO BADLY when I was little that I used to sleep with every ince of me buried under my down comforter so that the vampires couldn't find me while I was resting.
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I used to love diagraming them out so I could see what choices lead to good and bad endings. It was always a big quest to find the "right" ending. Sometimes some dumb decisions could get you some decent endings.
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My little brother loved those books when he was a kid. When my son was younger, he loved the Goosebumps version, where you could make the choice to influence the narrative. He loved them so much, that I made my own versions of the choose-your-own genre for him. In MY versions, smart choices led to "good" or at least funny results, and poor choices did not.
I recall writing "books" for him in whatever style he was into at the time -- I wrote some "Amelia Bedelias", and some "Dr. Seusses", too. Kinkos will bind them for you. And the kid gets to make the illustrations, if you add in blank pages for the pictures.
Have any of you parents out there done this for your kids?
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Lupus, cheating was the only way I would read them. I did NOT like those books. They scared and bothered me.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Well, that's good to know. But they might still have bothered me. I have a thing against uncertainty. It was much worse as a child; I think some of my control issues stem from all the stuff with my parents' divorce and all.
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I had a bunch of Choose Your Own Adventure books, as well as some copycats (Which-Way books?). Also, I had a few that were one more step down that long, dark road to DnD where they took famous Sci-fi novels (like Starship Troopers) and made stories where you rolled dice to play out the battles.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Oh yeah, those books were awesome. I would go through naturally a few times, then I'd find the good ending and work backward. Of course, I'd always end up sidetracked horribly. . The one that has always stuck with me was one about some kid who somehow or another got to be 5 minutes ahead of everyone else ... oh, I don't know, my memory is fuzzy. But it was weird. Also the one about the theme park. That one had some gruesome endings.
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The books were very dark, as I recall. Usually there was only one "good" ending...every other ending ranging from "Sucks to be you!" to "Horrible, bloody, screaming death!" Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Those books were teh awesome. I did what stihl did, after I choose my own ending (which usually ended up being some sort of rather quick death), I'd go back and read all the other possibilities.
I loved the pirate one.
And the space vampire one.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Tante Shvester: My little brother loved those books when he was a kid. When my son was younger, he loved the Goosebumps version, where you could make the choice to influence the narrative. He loved them so much, that I made my own versions of the choose-your-own genre for him. In MY versions, smart choices led to "good" or at least funny results, and poor choices did not.
I recall writing "books" for him in whatever style he was into at the time -- I wrote some "Amelia Bedelias", and some "Dr. Seusses", too. Kinkos will bind them for you. And the kid gets to make the illustrations, if you add in blank pages for the pictures.
Have any of you parents out there done this for your kids?
My mom did that for me! I used to love it, and I'd bring the books over to my friends house next door and he'd be all jealous cause he didn't have any books that had him as the main character. (oh yeah, my mom also made the cast of the books her kids.) She would bind them herself with a thick needle and string and gaffer's tape. Man, that was cool, I should call my mom and ask her to write a novel for me.
Oh! She could re-write all of OSC's books with ME as the main character! Yaay! ... Wow, for a second there I really felt like a little kid.
Also like your son, I mostly read the Goosebumps CYOA stories. Maybe him and me should go to Chuck E. Cheese's together. Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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So what was the "right" age for reading them? I tried them around, letsee, 7th grade, liked a couple, then figured out the formula and got bored with the rest and dropped them.
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
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10 to 12. I dropped them as I got older as well, but when I was in elementary school they were great books.
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I liked reading them alot when I was in 2nd-5th grade I mean come on, they had ordinary kids going to martial arts school only to find out they were really training to become a ninja! Then of course it was time for secret ninja missions!
My only problem with them was often choices were mundane with both options being equally tenable. Like, "Do you climb up the ladder or go down the stairs?" By going up the ladder you might fall through a weak spot in the roof and by going downstairs you might fall down a trap door.
I would have much preferred an intelligent question that you could think your way through and decide, for example,
"You see a henchman standing guard but his back is to you, if you sneak up and knock him out go to page 54, or stay in the shadows and try to sneak into the next room and go to page 60."
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I always like the choose your own adventures when I was younger.
i also read that where called Micro adventures. they had little Basic type programs in them. you could but on your computer.
Posts: 513 | Registered: Oct 2001
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I used to love those books! My favourite ones were Supercomputer, Return to the Cave of Time (it had this cool part where you ended up attacked to a pleasure machine, and another part where you were 5 minutes ahead of everyone else, that was so cool!) The Mystery of the Highland Crest, The Lost Tribe. I loved the Edward Packard books and hated the ones with too many endings. I used to read a ton of them when I was a kid and would sometimes read them backwards.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I hated the books that cheated (which was a lot of them) by having no objective reality.
Example: you're in a tv station, do you enter the office or the control room?
If you enter the office, you meet the manager and later in the plot it's revealed she is a CIA agent.
If you enter the control room, then there's a mind control plot and later when meet the same woman she's a villain!
I understand it allows more plots, but even as a child this bugged me, the idea that choosing a door retroactively determined whether a person was a villain or a good guy, whether the tv station was doing mind control or a front for KBG operations.
Not all books did this, and I liked those a lot better.
Posts: 454 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I read them in elementary school and the one I remember most clearly, you were on the olympic swimming team and there was this weird manly girl on the russian (I think) team. Your choices eventually led to things like her getting disqualified, no one finding out that she's on steroids, the whole swimming part of the competition being cancelled, etc. I also had one or two Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys (or both, teamed up maybe?) choose your own adventure books that made solving the mystery a lot more fun.
Posts: 1547 | Registered: Jan 2004
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I think the worst part of the space vampire book was the pictures. I remember they had a picture on the page where you walk into a room and find all of these people lying down with all the blood drained out of them, and the illustration...:shudder:
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There was one with a UFO where there was a secret ending that you could only get to by making no choices. Which I never understood, because really the only way to get to it was to flip through the pages and read all the endings.
There was one set in the future where the US was split into rival nations. I thought that was kinda scarey as a kid.
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where they took famous Sci-fi novels (like Starship Troopers) and made stories where you rolled dice to play out the battles.
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. The one that has always stuck with me was one about some kid who somehow or another got to be 5 minutes ahead of everyone else ... oh, I don't know, my memory is fuzzy. But it was weird. Also the one about the theme park. That one had some gruesome endings.
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