A young girl is going through a box on antiques and finds an old box camera that magically transports her to 1933 where she meets American Girl Kit Kittridge and learns about the Great Depression. Your choices in the book move the story along.
Full Speed Ahead: My Journey with Kit
American Girl Beforever Journey
by Valerie Tripp
illustrated by Juliana Kolesova and Michael Dworkin
American Girl Publishing
August 2014
Growing up I was a big fan of Choose Your Own Adventure. As an adult I love mobile phone games and Kindle books, like Click Your Poison, that serve the same purpose: allowing you to put yourself and your decisions in the story. Unfortunately, the American Girl Beforever series is no CYOA.
I've now read three of these books and each one provides many choices and endings but they just aren't as exciting as CYOA. Here's the key difference in a nutshell: in good CYOA type books you feel like you are playing the book. In AG: B books you feel like you are making the choices that the writers want you to make. It's tied, in my opinion, to the fact that these books serve as advertisements for existing dolls with their own histories and stories so there is no wriggle room. If these were new dolls with new stories this wouldn't be an issue.
Further, what is up with requiring readers to go online to beforever.com/endings to see certain endings? When you visit that site you see the endings for ALL the books in the series! This is a terrible way to end a "book" but a great marketing way to target young girls.
