Boredom Buster: You Choose Books

Have you ever heard of a You Choose Book?

I can remember reading these books when I was a child and I always enjoyed them. I have looked for these for my own children and all I have found were the scary Goosebumps books which would not thrill my kids.

If you have never read or even heard of these books I'll explain one to you. These are books that place you in a story setting and then you choose the path you wish to take. One example is the book called "The Battle of Bunker Hill". First you choose whether you are going to be a Patriot in the Revolutionary War, a British soldier sent to fight the American Rebels or a Boston civilian trying to make sense of the chaos overtaking your city. Once you decide who you are going to be then you read along and choose the paths you are going to take. Each path will end the story in a different way. So you can re-read the story and have a different ending each time.

Anyways.... I was flipping through my bookclub the other day and found several of these books. "The Golden Age of Pirates" and "The Battle of Bunker Hill". I ordered them and then one day after school my boys were bored so I gave them each a book (expecting to see them toss it aside and tell me they were out of school for the day and weren't reading anymore.) To my surprise their reactions were quite different. They both sat the whole evening reading till they were finished and then they swapped books and read some more.

It was AMAZING!!!

My oldest son no longer enjoys reading and my youngest son has never really appreciated reading. So it was great to see them both curled up with a good book and no TV or video games going. This particular series has six books in all so I am ordering more but I am also on the lookout for some others fun reads like these. They are a real fun way to get the kids to read!