Choose Your Own Adventure Books
What a great idea they were. I never liked reading too much, but with these kind of books I would actually sit down, read and, most importantly, enjoy! The idea was simple, you start reading and at the end of a passage you would be given a choice of what you would like to do next in the story. You would then turn to a specific page depending upon what you had chosen.
There were endless possibilities, well not really, there were only a certain number of possibilities, but as a kid, you though that no matter how many times you read the book, each adventure would be different.
I think I first got these given away free with breakfast cereal, saving the tokens, posting them off and waiting 'up to 28 days for delivery'. (Why did everything take so long to get delivered!), and then as I grew up I progressed to Fighting Fantasy books, very similar in concept, only with a little role playing and dice throwing chance thrown in.
I don't know if such books still exist, I hope they do. Perhaps it’s because kids these days (Did I just say that!!!???) are more interested in computer games than reading books. Mind you, so was I when I was a kid, but I still found time to read the odd book or two!
Bring back the Choose Your Own Adventure Books!