You and your sister Hannah are on vacation at Lake Champlain in Vermont. You have heard a lot of stories about Champ, a huge monster some people say lives in the lake. You and Hannah are sure that if this monster is real, you can find it! You also find clues to a strange mystery of missing jewels.
Your child can have a say in how the story unfolds with this Choose Your Own Adventure book! As the first page explains, simply "Read until you reach a choice. Turn the page of the choice you like best. If you don't like the end you reach, just start over!" There are eight different endings in this book. Each page has large, vibrantly colored ink and watercolor pictures and up to a half page of large printed words. These books make the reader the star by using the less-common second person narrative, speaking directly to the reader with "you" statements. For example, The Lake Monster Mystery begins with,"You visit the lake every summer, but this year is special. You have decided to spend your visit searching for Champ, a sea creature who lives in the lake."The decision points are cliff hangers, leaving readers eager to decide which story line to follow and find out what happens next. Each adventure within the book requires readers to make at least two choices of which path to follow. This provides your child with more independence than they usually have when reading a story. It also provides practice in decision-making and teaches that every decision has a consequence. This book involves stories that include silly looking sea monsters, almost getting struck by lightening, visiting a haunted house, and solving a 70 year-old burglary mystery. Choosing their own adventure also provides children with practice following directions; the bottom of each page directs them to either the next page, or a specific page number. My niece, Emily, recently turned five and has really gotten in to these books. She loves to swim, so she liked that the setting of this book was in the water. Emily let out an excited "Ooooooooo!" on one page featuring a princess. She later declared that the book gave her "lots of good ideas of pretend games to play in the pool next time!"
--Audra
Shannon Gilligan is a well-known creator of interactive narrative games for the computer. She has spoken about interactive narrative and game design at conferences in Japan, Europe, and the United States. Gilligan got her start in this field by writing for the Choose Your Own Adventure® series in the 1980s. Her books and games have sold several million copies around the world. She graduated from Williams College in 1981 and lives in Warren, Vermont with her husband R.A. Montgomery and her extended family. Gilligan returns to Asia at least once a year. She harbors a secret ambition to write a cookbook.