One of my favorites from my youth. Quasi-interactive feel “do you turn the page or not?” - Grover does not want you to reach the end of the book. Definitely fourth-wall breaking with the reader who is addressed directly and a fun participatory read with parent and child.
[!edit]- EDIT: They made an interactive app that is fully animated and voice-acted!
This is a video of it YOU TURNED THEE PAAAAGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3947-T_hHw
Also, this might be a good option for later. It’s got optional audio narration but would definitely require assistance for a 3-4 year old.
Thank you for reminding me of this. I had this one and, thanks to you, have discovered that I was one of a great many children who did. Grover was always my favorite.
We love Sesame Street so I will try to find this metatextual story. It sounds really funny.
I tried the other one and it looks very interesting and well written. Yes, this could be great for later indeed. Or I could adapt the text for him maybe.
If you type them into YouTube, you’ll find read-along videos that are narrated for practically all Mercer Mayer books. Each book lasts about 3 minutes and you get to see what the whole book has to offer.
At 3 or 4, I honestly think the homemade version might be better than most published choice books anyway. You can keep each branch really short, use people or situations he already understands, and only give him two choices at a time.
You could even reuse the same basic story and change one decision each time. Kids that age usually love repetition, and it gives them a chance to see how a different choice changes what happens next.
I’d still be interested in any good published recommendations, though. Most of the “choose your own adventure” stuff I’ve seen seems aimed at older kids.
Thank you! The Young Readers collection could be fine, just a little adapted for his understanding.
You can recognize the same style of the original CYOA. I was afraid the little boy was going to die. I suppose they had to restrain to avoid including sudden deaths
My idea is to draw some other stories for him, but I don´t have all the time I would like to be able to make a long story (at least for now), only short ones, so PLAN B is looking also for something he could enjoy even if the doesn´t understand everything, maybe adjusting the language and the story while reading aloud.
Yeah, apparently the endings are more kid-friendly. I’m reminded of Artax sinking into the Swamp of Sadness… my kid was so concerned and a bit distraught about the horse, but it all worked out in the end. Thank God. Whew!
I think the CYOA books are great for getting boys into reading. They just started appearing while I was in elementary and I gravitated towards them because they were short to read. I still prefer short stories, but reading short stories builds stamina to enjoy full novels.
I will say this though. Kids grow up fast. Getting the Young Readers series earlier will have them available for when your child is ready for them… instead of scrambling to acquire them as the window of opportunity is closing.
Edit:Another great series for short reading spurts around grade 2 or 3 are the Encyclopedia Brown books. If you are not familiar, they are detective mysteries to solve with the answers at the back of the book. Reading this series forces your kid to really take in all the information being described and then contemplate it (good studying/learning habits) before seeing if their answer matches the boy detective’s answer. They are super fun.
The first full novels that I enjoyed reading to my son and my son then started reading on his own are the Beast Quest novels. They read a bit like an RPG video game in that each beast has a magic trinket, that the hero must acquire, and then the piece has a purpose in the subsequent novels. Very simple gimmick, but very effective for at least 12 books or so. (I’m not going to vouch for the whole series.)
The first thing that came to mind was the old 2-XL talking robot, which I’m pretty sure had a few programs aimed that young… I remember picking up the Tiger model from the 90s off eBay some years ago for not to much and picking up several tapes for like $5 a pop, though I also recall some tapes going for like $40 and I think that was before the pandemic caused massive inflation in retro gaming and no clue if 2-Xl is close enough to get caught up in such… There is an emulator at https://www.2xlbot.com/ but at the moment, it seems to have become a broken anti-bot verifier.
Thank you for all the recommendations! I will come back to the Young Readers series when he´s ready and I will check the Encyclopedia Brown books.
Somebody in the Textualiza Spanish Community recommended me the Hypercard children games. Some of them are awesome, though too much screen time it´s not good at his age, but Ziggy is adorable…
I think I played The Treehouse just as much as my kid did, I swear. Simple. Very simple, but lots to explore… and a few secrets to uncover. It’s way more sophisticated than appears and I think it’s perfect for your child right now. There are games about counting, music, theatre, nature, etc.
There was a CD-ROM version much later that I never tried out.
A cool point-and-click adventure game for young kids was Fatty Bear’s Birthday Surprise. You play a child’s teddy bear and you want to bake a cake for your friend while she sleeps. The inventory you carry is always at the bottom so there are no menus to navigate while playing the game. It has a dark, mysterious vibe, but is not scary… unless toys coming to life freaks you out.
These games were released for MAC and PC, but it might be easier to run DOSBox these days. Ron Gilbert founded Humongous Entertainment so that’s why their series of Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam and Freddi Fish look so polished. Definitely worth checking those out.
Okay, okay. I’m shutting up now. Have fun being an awesome dad!
