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 by Justina Addice
Imagine this: you’re eight years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the children's section of your town’s public library, facing shelves of R.L. Stine's collection of horror novels. You’ve just opened up the cover of Give Yourself Goosebumps: The Werewolf of Twisted Tree Lodge, and upon reading the first words, you are immediately immersed in this second-person narrative where you’re the main character. It begins with a bus ride; you’ve just won first prize for a horror story that you didn’t actually write, and are now on your way to claim your prize, to spend a weekend away at a spooky cabin in the woods… Fast forward thirteen years later to October 2018, where you come across old episodes of Goosebumps on television, and vague snippets of one specific story suddenly appears in your mind—images of traveling to a cabin, being chased by werewolves through a forest, of turning into a werewolf yourself. Others follow that, and you’re suddenly reminded of the wonderful stories you read as a child, ones where you were able to choose the outcome of the plot, where you could relive the same situation over and over with a new ending each time. You scramble to your laptop, and although it takes a while before you can actually find these stories you’ve somehow forgotten, you eventually come across it: Give Yourself Goosebumps. And underneath is a key word describing its genre: gamebook.  by Dylann Cohn-Emery
A teenager walked up and down the aisles of Barnes and Noble, searching for the perfect book. In her mind that meant something weighty, something she would have to put time into to finish. “Short books just turn me off,” she told her friend. It is understandable that readers might want the challenge of reading a lengthy book, something they know will take weeks, if not months. Perhaps they think the subplots and extra detail might make the book better, and that short books can’t have a full, satisfying story. I used to maintain this mindset; I was this girl, who thought that reading bigger books made me smarter and more interesting. I thought they were better because they had more to say. |
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