Skateboard Champion

Choose Your Own Adventure #112

by Edward Packard

The reader's decisions control the fate of a slowly improving skateboarder who gets a chance to be coached by the leader of the school's skateboarding group

Genres: Choose Your Own Adventure, Gamebooks

116 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Edward Packard attended and graduated from both Princeton University and Columbia Law School. He was one of the first authors to explore the idea of gamebooks, in which the reader is inserted as the main character and makes choices about the direction the story will go at designated places in the text.

The first such book that Edward Packard wrote in the Choose Your Own Adventure series was titled "Sugarcane Island", but it was not actually published as the first entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. In 1979, the first book to be released in the series was "The Cave of Time", a fantasy time-travel story that remained in print for many years. Eventually, one hundred eighty-four Choose Your Own Adventure books would be published before production on new entries to the series ceased in 1998. Edward Packard was the author of many of these books, though a substantial number of other authors were included as well.

In 2005, Choose Your Own Adventure books once again began to be published, but none of Edward Packard's titles have yet been included among the newly-released books.

Reviews

[Nick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know what would be a good thing to include in a Choose Your Own Adventure book titled Skateboard Champion? An ending where you become a skateboard champion. You can quit skateboarding, you can foil a criminal conspiracy, you can become a punk, you can lose the money your parents had saved for college, you can end up in the hospital in more than one way, you can become a skiing champion, you can become a snowboarding champion; however, in Skateboard Champion you cannot even participate in a skateboard competition, much less become a champion. The closest you get is an ending where a guy promises to build a skate park and you wistfully think that perhaps it will help you someday achieve your dream of becoming a champion.

Edward Packard what are you doing?

[DW]

Dude, if you don't try to become the Skateboard Champion while being a good boy TM, this book wrecks you. Like the hand of God from the sky, wrecks you. You get chicken pox, people die, the whole nine yards. It's like a DM that wrote an adventure exactly one way and you WILL comply.

I refused to comply.

Lol the first option is: do you join the skaters led by the dreamy Mr. Perfect who respect his elders? OR do you join the Winner's club filled with the cool kids? I join the Winner's Club. Obviously.

Within a page--before you even get another choice--you 'realize the winners are a bunch of try hards and you decide to quit the Winner's club.'

Choose your own adventure? "Choose MY adventure", cackled Mr. Packard.

Also, if you want to sound cool and not like an aging bourgeois on a porch with your fist to the sky? May I suggest not writing about how expensive it will be to refinish a swimming pool due to property damage multiple times, over several story arcs.

I think this book says the words 'refinish the pool' fifteen times mininum, almost as many times as it says the word ollie.

Whatever. Total legend, must read. It was a love letter to the futility of free will and I was transfixed. Read this book.

If you don't, turn to page 5.

Page 5: "You just read the book by choosing not to," cackled Mr. Packard. "Now you better pay for my pool, you punk!"

[Javier Alburquerque · Rating 3 out of 5]

Para que te vaya bien en la historia tienes que limitarte a ser un santurrón. Yo acabé mi aventura pillado por la policía y teniendo que pagar una indemnización de miles de dólares.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Te has trasladado con tu familia a una pequeña localidad de California: Park city, y has comenzado las clases en un instituto en dónde hay muchas pandillas, entre ellas una de aficionados de alto nivel al monopatín, cosa que te atrae mucho.

A tenor de su titulo, todo parecía pronosticar que se centraría a nivel argumental en un campeonato de Monopatín (y más con el glosario que contiene previo al inicio, que te después sirve para visualizar las acciones del protagonista en sus carreras y / o huidas urbanas); la cual cosa no me atraía demasiado. Sin embargo, mi sorpresa ha sido grata al ver que Packard se ha desviado de su protocolo habitual de narrativa con acción y peligros en un entorno frenético cuando el libro lo requiere, y ha optado por enfocarse en los problemas sociales del entorno del nuevo barrio del protagonista, las tribus urbanas, la delincuencia y los trapicheos habituales en vecindarios de dudoso y hereditario calado moral. Todo ello ha conseguido dotar a éste moderno número, dentro de la serie, de un aire nuevo y algo más actualizado, natural y que toca de pies en el suelo, ya que las aventuras al uso de descubrimientos y exploraciones, terror y fantasía están más que consagradas en la famosa serie, y el que guste puede leer muy buenas entre sus clásicos.
A parte de todo lo mencionado, las historias no van más allá de un par de situaciones que debes resolver o con las que te encuentras, como por ejemplo un atraco o una duda vital en tu futuro, un accidente o una oportunidad de mejora en tu barrio. Correcto en longitud en cada historia y con un poco más de una decena de finales, la cual cosa hará que se pueda disfrutar más de la aventura en sí, explicarla con menos precipitación que en otros tomos.
En resumen, muy buen tomo de un Packard tardío, que sin hacer una de sus obras maestras, ha sabido reinventarse.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about a boy who just moved to california. He wanted to join a school group but didn't know which one. He desides to join the skateboarding group. While he is skateboarding with his friend Steve, this car intentioally tried to run over Steve. The main character in this book has no mention of a name but he figures out that the car that tried to run over Steve were the same people robbing the banks.

[Sheila Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

the adventures that I went through when I was bored I just read these books over and over again you would never get to the end of the story.