Monday, May 20, 2013

Choose Your Own Adventure

     olivia is usually the one who gets the girls down for bed and before sleep, she reads them a couple books. Lately, Ruby has been really stoked on my old Choose Your Own Adventure books. In case you do not remember these from when you were younger, they do not read straight through. Every few pages or so you are faced with a choice that will effect the outcome of the story.
     We have to read them to her aloud. The best part for me is when we get to the choices. It's pretty awesome to see the gears turning in her head and the internal weighing of options. We've always been pretty good about encouraging her independence and I think these are a great way for her to learn about decisions and consequences.
     I put her to bed the other night and read one to her and she was most sad when her choice resulted in a very brief story time. There is nothing keeping her from trying again another night. The great thing about these books is the added readability. The one above alone boasts 40 possible endings.
     Ru is very selective right now about which ones she does and does not want you to read to her. She goes by the covers which I think is a solid indicator. I'm sure these will see a lot of use in the future. We have a pretty good collection of them. I'm pretty sure they will keep the girls busy and engaged for a bit.


5 comments:

  1. I LOVED the choose your own adventure books. I would check them out from the library every week and have probably read most all of the options on some of the stories.

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  2. I loved those books when I was a kid!!!! It makes me happy that she's reading them now. I'm having so much fun finding books from when I was a kid and introducing Ella to them too. I hasn't thought about starting the choose your own adventure books now.

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  3. Kelly-I remember getting to that point too. Once I had read the books enough I just went straight through and read all the endings. There were only a few that I liked so much I would actually read time and time again.

    Amanda-We have some other young adult books, good and bad, we are looking forward to them reading. I have to be careful about trying to make their childhood too much like my own though. I just feel like we we had SO MUCH awesome stuff and these days...kids and teens really don't.

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  4. A lot of the new books for kids really aren't that great. I have found a few that are pretty good though. You should check out Priscilla McDoodlenutDoodleMcMae Asks Why? by Janet Mary Sinke and Craig Pennington. It's not quite as advanced as some of the books you are reading with her but it's still quite good and helps start a good conversation. There is also Priscilla Asks Why? The Rest of the Story by Janet Mary Sinke which is on our next library run list. It's an extended/chapter book version of the same story.

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  5. Cool, I will check them out.
    I was looking back on this the other day and thought about Encyclopedia Brown.
    Do you remember that series? I always enjoyed them, he was a kind of Sherlock Holmes for kids.

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