The hero of a kids’ book doesn’t usually die. In Choose Your Own Adventure books, a children’s series that has sold more than 270m copies and been translated into 40 languages since its launch in 1979, the hero dies multiple times, in unpleasant, unexpected and often grotesque ways. And that hero happens to be You.
You, the reader, addressed in the second person, make choices every few pages, to find out who killed Harlowe Thrombey, to seek the lost jewels of Nabooti, uncover the secret of the pyramids, or escape being a prisoner of the Ant People. And while some endings can be deemed happy, in most scenarios you end up dead. You can get eaten by insects, rodents, goblins or intergalactic meatpackers. Stabbed by ghosts, lanced by knights, or executed by gangsters. You fall down mineshafts, off cliffs, into wormholes, and perish in every conceivable natural catastrophe.
