CM Magazine: Lost in the Crater of Fear. (Lost: Can You Survive?).

________________ CM . . . . Volume XXIII Number 7. . . .October 21, 2016

cover
Lost in the Crater of Fear. (Lost: Can You Survive?).

Tracey Turner.
St. Catharinws, ON: Crabtree, 2016.
128 pp., pbk. & hc., $11.95 (pbk.), $25.95 (List RLB), $20.76 (School RLB).
ISBN 978-0-7787-2355-4 (pbk.), ISBN 978-0-7787-2353-0 (RLB).

Subject Heading:
Plot-your-own stories.

Grades 6-10 / Ages 11-15.

Review by Lacey Hall.

**** /4

excerpt:

You stop walking to stare out across the crater, doing your best to shake off a feeling of impending doom. You know your campsite is somewhere along the crater’s edge, but you’re not sure where exactly. And you begin to wonder how many dangerous animals might be lurking between here and your destination.

Lost in the Crater of Fear is a “choose your own adventure” style novel that sets the reader in the Ngorongoro Crater, a portion of the African Desert that once was a large volcano. The crater is home to approximately 25,000 animals, many of which are dangerous. The scene is set for the reader at the beginning – you are stranded in the desert as the jeep tour you were on has left without you. Can you survive? Readers answer this and many more questions throughout the course of the story, each choice leading them on a journey of survival. One wrong choice and you might not make it out alive; a combination of many right choices, and you could find your way back to camp.

As always, Tracey Turner incorporates information along each part of the journey so that the reader can make informed decisions when it comes to such things as whether or not to run when a cheetah is spotted, or to be wary of a monkey’s cry. Because the book has so many different scenarios, it becomes a new story each time and offers new information to be gleaned with each reading. With its interactive quality, this “choose your own adventure” style narrative is one children will enjoy.

Highly Recommended.

Lacey Hall is a Master’s of Children’s Literature student at the University of British Columbia and currently works in the School of Business at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364 Hosted by the University of Manitoba.