Meanwhile: 06/19/11

Meanwhile by Jason Shiga won the Cybils for the middle grade graphic novels category. It's a graphic novel blended with a choose your own adventure. As with the very first Choose Your Own Adventure book, it's a time travel story.

Imagine if the world could come to an end over the choice of an ice cream flavor. Which is it going to be: chocolate or vanilla? One will give Jimmy the runs and his search for a toilet will introduce him to a mad scientist who is a little too willing to show off his inventions.

In the traditional choose your own adventure book, the options are printed at the bottom of the page with instructions to turn to the page number matching the choice. Here though, one follows colored tubes that go from one box, across the page (and sometimes many pages), out to a tab and onto another page with another box.

Following those little tubes were the most difficult part of reading the book. They are very often colored similar colors and its easy to fall of the correct track. It took me three goes with the book to finally feel like I was actually interacting with it.

My son who is just shy of the age range for this book had a much easier time reading the book. He tore through the major possibilities in about an hour. He loved the book.

Four stars.

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