YOU CHOOSE Reviews
Lots of lovely reviews have been floating around about the YOU CHOOSE books, so I thought I’d share some recent ones here on my blog.
I’ll start with my favorite review. From the Weekend Advocate in NSW, it focuses on nostalgia …
The ReadPlus website has published reviews of quite a number of my books. The latest review from Sue Warren is for the two current YOU CHOOSE titles, Alien Invaders from Beyond the Stars and Night of the Creepy Carnival…
“George has cleverly taken all the great aspects of gaming and transformed them into book form where readers can challenge themselves to achieve the end goal. While primarily aimed at Middle Primary to Upper Primary these can be enjoyed by readers of all ages and certainly, if you have readers who struggle these would be a superb choice as the level of engagement and the appeal of the subject matter are perfect.”
Earlier this year ReadPlus also published a review by Barbara Braxton of the two previous titles, Maze of Doom and The Haunting of Spook House. This review focuses on the potential educational aspects of the books…
“The appeal and importance of gaming within the formal education setting is becoming the focus of a lot of research and literature and this series provides a great foundation to actively engage and explore options.”
“As well as offering an engaging read, skilled teachers could use these books as models for an absorbing, integrated project that would draw in their writers, their illustrators, their mathematicians, their computer experts, and their gamers to create something new that accentuates the need for a team, encourages negotiation and compromise as well as the skills of seeing things from another perspective and looking for alternatives, and perhaps, even, the concept of empathy.”
And it concludes with:
“So glad this format is back on the reading agenda of the younger readers in my life.”
There have also been some lovely comments on social media. On FaceBook, Rochelle Llewelyn Nicholls said:
“I read the seminal Choose Your Own Adventure books while at school in the 80s. Your books have brought those wonderful concepts back into vogue with the kids at the library where I work now. Some of them read nothing else! George, your books have been a crucial part of our strategy to engage kids aged 8-12 and tempt them away from digital distractions back to good old print books. The interactive nature of the books makes them great for group reading sessions and they are just scary enough for the kids to think they are cool.”
And finally, there’s this video review from Hillcrest Christian College, for the two upcoming YOU CHOOSE books, Super Sports Spectacular and Trapped in the Games Grid — it’s on their FaceBook page.
ADDENDUM — 7 July 2015
And this lovely review from an 8-year-old showed up in the Western Australian. 🙂
