Josiah > Recent Status Updates

I guess either door took us home. I can live with that. A thank you to the fat brown (Jim Cummings) mouse! :-)

Hey...how did Homer make it back to our own backyard? Hmm...

I think I'll take both these endings, but first, the golden key.

Well...friendly faces are at a premium in this house, so I'll go with the fat jolly mouse.

I always imagine this mouse speaking in the same voice as Jim Cummings's Winnie the Pooh. Or Sterling Holloway's, maybe.

Nice.

No way I'm going down to the cellar in this haunt house!

I don't just want the same ending my choices always naturally funnel to. I'm going to willingly enter the crazy house.

A bizarre classic, but this too deserves at least one October read. I love Paul Granger's work.

Not quite as stark as the previous illustrations, but a rough-cut, eerie glimpse of the soldier ghost. Bill Schmidt is easily the star of this book.

This illustration has a comedic tinge, but still is plenty creepy. Look at those brittle-arm trees knifing into the night sky.

This drawing of the cemetery during a lightning storm may be even better than the page eight illustration. If only Shannon Gilligan's story were as good.

An awesome illustration here of you, Meg, and Jamie sneaking away at night under the forbidding white moon. Bill Schmidt strikes again.

I try to give this a read at least once every October. Is there a bigger fan of Bill Schmidt's illustrations for this book and Choose Your Own Nightmare than I?

Alura may not be the fabulous bargain we assumed it to be. The signs have been there...and now an allusion to ghosts?

This is one of Bill Schmidt's more foreboding covers for Choose Your Own Nightmare. I've never sat down and crafted the detailed review this book deserves, so...here we go.

Weird! But not a totally unjustified ending.

Nice, a three-pronged decision! I'm going to visit Lara because she seems the most pleasant of my teammates.

There was no satisfactory way out of this Monster Library.

It's time for the other primary story branch. I'll go with Lara, Marcie, and Martin to do the outside scavenger hunt as part of the Blue Team.

Not the book's most rewarding ending, but not bad.

This is the path I could have taken were I wearing a sweater last night as I read the book. I like the creative basis for some decisions in this series, provided it doesn't become ubiquitous.

Staying with the king would have been a bad choice, for sure!

There are worse things than life as a snake charmer in Ancient Egypt. I wonder what happens when you come home in three years. Will Nick, Debbie, and Connor be waiting to take you?

Let's see if we can avoid entering another mummy case to transport to our own time and escape the king's men.

Excellent! It turns out without the witch's broom we had no hope of surviving the elevator car dropping out from under us. Very smart storytelling.

Betraying the witch would have been a bad idea...sort of. At least we escaped Bat Wing Hall.

Wonderful. If there are others endings this meaningful, I might rate Trapped in Bat Wing Hall three stars, a level I suspected no Give Yourself Goosebumps book would attain.

We're at the final encounter. Will the werewolf respond to dog commands so I can pluck the werewolf hairs I need to win the scavenger hunt and buy my survival?

Only a few minutes to midnight...