Item - The Tower of London

This is a pleasant little collection of ghost stories with just the right level of creepiness for its target age group. There's not all that much to it, but it has a good diversity of ghouls and adventures crammed into its relatively few pages.

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Bland as the Bantam Skylark Choose Your Own Adventures could be, the best authors threw an occasional curve, and that's true of The Tower of London. It takes the scare factor beyond the norm. On a tour of England over summer vacation, you visit your pen pal Rodney in London. His father is a yeoman warder at the notorious Tower of London, and the family resides in an onsite apartment. Rodney claims ghosts haunt the Tower, and invites you to sneak out and explore with him after midnight. As you're about to enter the inner area, you hear footsteps. Rodney bolts, fearful of getting caught by a guard. You need to catch up to him, but is that shadow along the wall Rodney, or is he hiding in the trees?

Follow the shadow and you are grabbed by a ghostly figure who identifies himself as Richard. Rodney told you King Richard III had his two preteen nephews murdered here centuries ago. Screaming for help gets you knocked unconscious; you awaken with only Rodney there, and he's eager to continue exploring. If you go with him to Tower Green, a spectral figure roams toward you: a headless woman. Is it the ghost of beheaded Anne Boleyn? You can run and hide up a tree, but taking a closer look at the ghost yields a surprise. If you go to the Bloody Tower instead of Tower Green, you run into the Chief Warder, who may punish you for being here at this hour. Perhaps you never screamed while Richard III had you. If not, he locks you in a dungeon and goes back for Rodney. You locate a hidden escape passage, but should you take it now or wait for Rodney? Exiting now has a chilling result, but if you stay until Richard throws Rodney in the dungeon, the secret passage no longer opens. Two ghosts wordlessly pull you and Rodney out of your cell, toward the sound of Richard's voice. Do they want you dead, or are they somehow helping? You don't wish to suffer the fate of Richard's nephews long ago.

Looking for Rodney in the trees instead of following the shadow at the book's first decision, you spot three men sneaking into the Tower. Are they robbers? Rodney dismisses the idea, but if you stick close to the intruders you'll spy them climbing the White Tower, where the Crown Jewels are kept. Climbing up after them gets you nabbed by the criminals, but someone—or something—frightens them off before they can complete the heist. If instead of climbing the White Tower, you send Rodney for the guards, the robbers spot you as they head out with their stolen goods. Will help arrive soon enough to save you?

The Tower of London isn't afraid to push the line with young readers. There's one death ending, a suitably creepy one with a mild philosophical point to offer. The ghostly action is more exciting than your average Bantam Skylark Choose Your Own Adventure, and the story threads are internally consistent. I love the ending in which young Edward V and Prince Richard help you escape their own long-ago fate at the hands of their uncle. It's a poignant moment. The book's artwork is gorgeous; Ralph Reese's cover colors are some of the prettiest in the series, and Lorna Tomei's interior illustrations are stunning. See pages twenty, twenty-one, twenty-four, and forty-four to get a small sampling. The Tower of London is among the best in this series, and if it were a bit more surprising or emotional, I’d hail it as a gamebook classic.

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