I don’t know about you, but I used to enjoy the Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid/pre-teen. They were easy and even back then I liked that quick read. That mystery of where your choice would take you. Now they were not my main genre for reading and I moved onto other books, but I always held a small space in my heart for them. And as a bookseller I found them again, but again, I don’t need to read. But I found a younger version of them, physically a larger format (as if you took one and a half of a regular mass market and put it together or a shorter picture book), less chocies, bold colors and larger text.
Choose Your Own Adventure books have always been like circus peanuts or maple sugar candy: good for once in a while, as a treat. But I indulged the other day with Choose Your Own Adventure: The Ghost on the Mountain (Dragonlarks) by Kyandreia Jones and illustrated by Manuel Mal. Everything about them is easy, bright and bold. This larger physical size allows for read aloud and the younger reader to grab them, but I did find it a smidgen awkward with my sold read. Those big, bright colors that pop off the pages accompanied me, so it was worth it. They showed a little of the story without giving it all away. And this one is a fun choose your own adventure story as it deals with relatable characters and themes but also is new and fresh. That younger reader (at least aged 6/7 to 10) or for the adult who remembers them from their childhood, can have the classic and modern.
Perhaps things would have been a bit more fresh if the culture of Haiti would have been explored, but by not going too deeply into it, it is understandable and relatable to multiple audiences. The nonbinary presenting main character allows this to be accessible to all types of readers, and there is a quirky grandmother that has some tricks up her sleeves, and friends that want to meet her grandchild.