You turn the key in the locked door. As the squeaky hinges give way and the door swings open, you are treated to a verdant field covered in waves of wildflowers in every color. In the distance, a huge ancient tree towers above the landscape. You step out into the lush meadow, eyes fixed on the tree ahead. You don’t notice the doorway shrinking out of existence but as a loud crash booms behind you, you turn to see your escape is gone. In its place is a monstrous figure rapidly approaching. The features are indistinct, from this distance, but the growling you hear is terrifying.
Do you quickly make your way to the ancient tree or do you stand your ground and wait to get a better look of the terrifying figure barreling towards you, If you choose the tree, turn to page 35. If you choose to wait to see the figure, turn to page 98.
There are things that can make you truly love a past time. Sometimes they are the things from our childhood or specific moments in our lives that solidify a love of something that will carry through the remainder of our days. For me, it is the love of reading. It is a trait that was passed down from my mother to me. Out of all of the books that I have loved reading, in my life, there is one type of book that solidified that love of reading, it was the Choose Your Own Adventure books.
- Mom’s Magic Key: Unleashing My Reading Journey
- Secret Shelf & Adventure Awaits
- Choose Your Own Adventure & The Power of Choice
- Childhood experiences and lifelong passions
Mom’s Magic Key: Unleashing My Reading Journey
My mother wanted better for her kids than was given to her or to our father. Part of that wanting better included us learning as much as we could and to become free thinkers. Reading was my mother’s escape from a world that she often felt she was trapped in. It gave her pathways out of the limiting factors that were placed on her and to experience places, people, and feelings that she may otherwise not have had the chance to experience.
She wanted the same for us.
I remember at a very early age, my mother pushing me to read anything and everything.Classics littered our old house, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures Huckleberry Finn, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Valley of the Dolls were some of a few books that I remember deeply from my childhood. My early beginnings started with the Golden Book series and moved up to book adaptations of movies. My mother encouraged every one of them, even when I turned to comic books. Her thought was that any viewpoint, different from my own or what was being taught, was valuable.
By the time I was in third or fourth grade, my mother even helped me get my first library card. Each visit to the library was almost as exciting as getting lost on the toy aisle at Hills Department Store. (IYKYK) Here I could be surrounded by stories of knights and dragons, aliens and world domination, and every aspect of science and history I could wrap my little fingers around. It was a second heaven.
However, there was one thing that changed all of that, for me. Choose Your Own Adventure books.
Secret Shelf & Adventure Awaits
I had an aunt, Jane Lucas, that worked as the librarian for our elementary school. That was a blessing and a curse, at the same time. The curse was that she knew me well and I couldn’t get away with much, the blessing was that she held the keys to the magical kingdom of walls full of books. To this very day, I can still remember the smell the library had as soon as I walked in the door. It takes me back.
My aunt was someone who valued education and intelligence. She was from my father’s side of the family but did not suffer the same attitudes that most of them had. She was beyond them, I once heard Nanny say that she was “liberated,” as a kid, I didn’t know what that meant but in the way it was said in mild disgust made me want to know her even more.
Jane could relate to my love of reading. She encouraged me to read from every genre of book I could find. The more I knew the better I could interact with the world. She would walk me around the library and show me the small statue copies of great works of art and explain them to me. But, Jane had a secret to share with me, one that she knew I would love. That secret was the Scholastic Book Fair.This was an event that came to elementary schools once a year. Before it arrived, they sent flyers in advance to show all of the books and items they had for sell. They even had check boxes and order forms so you could pre-order. This was a game changer for me and got me excited in ways that only could be matched by getting some exclusive action figure I had always wanted.
In this book fair I found a book type that I had never heard of before, the Choose Your Own Adventure book. I was intrigued and begged mom to be able to buy one. Combining what little allowance I had and my mother adding some money, okay I actually didn’t have an allowance just a promise to work it off. I purchased one and suddenly love of reading took on a whole other level of excitement.
Choose Your Own Adventure & The Power of Choice
Choose Your Own Adventure books are pretty basic in nature. The story starts out, as most do, introducing the character and setting up the scene. By the end of the first chapter you are given choices of how to proceed. Depending on your choice, it could spell ultimate doom, amazing rewards, or just a continuation onto the next choice. Sometimes there were only a couple choices and others you had several. This led me, and others, to believe that we were actually in control of the story and our fates in it.
My first Choose Your Own Adventure book I followed the directions to the letter. I read the story and when the choice came, I chose one option and proceeded the story from there. If I chose poorly, I would start the story all over again. That was until my best friend, Wesley, pointed out that I could just as easily mark the page of the choice and then look ahead at the options to see which I liked best, before choosing.
Okay, yes I get it that is cheating.
What made those books even more loved by me was that they came in multiple genres. If you like fantasy, there were books that allowed you to be a magician or a knight. If you liked exploration stories, you could be the archaeologist that uncovers a lost, hidden civilization, or you could be the hero of some science fiction adventure. There was always a choice in genre and how the story progressed.
This illusion of choice is what inspired me to read them, over and over again. From there I learned to love how an author told a story and eventually found that I preferred their well-crafted tale than to, simply, go through and see which ending I liked better.
To this day, I am reminded of the excitement I felt seeing those books for the first time and the gamut of emotions I explored by flipping through an adventure that I felt I could craft as my own. Those books made me the avid reader I am today.
Childhood experiences and lifelong passions
We all have things from our past that were the keystones for building a love of something that we carry with us, to this very day. Whether it was bonding with your father over a love of sports or with other members of your family and the thrill of exploring some new civilization in a book you have never read or re-read multiple times. Those things are important to our growth and interactions with the world. MIne came from a simple formula for a book that gave the reader an impression of control in a world where they had little they could exert on their own. It gave me the foundation to look at a situation and find multiple ways to solve it. These Choose Your Own Adventure books were the foundation of my love of reading that grew from my childhood and persists to this day.
Are there any things from your past that solidified a continued love of it into your adulthood? Did you ever experienced any of these Choose Your Own Adventure books? If so, do any of their titles still fill your mind? Let me know in the comments below. I actually have four of those books still and if you guys are interested in a possible book review post of them, let me know and I can work on that. Thanks for sharing Choose Your Own Adventure: How Interactive Books Launched My Love of Reading with me. After all, it is you guys, the readers, that I do this blog and share my views. Thank you!!!
Gay in the CLE 