Item - Spooky Thanksgiving

This isn't a bad holiday-themed adventure. While it doesn't seem too interested in accurate historical detail or internal consistency, it has a few nice touches -- its attempt at conveying the original meaning of Thanksgiving is reasonably effective, and parts of the sequence involving a "ghost turkey" are rather amusing and memorable. Not a classic, but a decent effort.

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Is this book what it appears to be? Spooky Thanksgiving, late as it came in the Bantam Skylark Choose Your Own Adventure series, is more than a holiday novelty; it blurs the lines of reality. You, your parents, and younger brother Nick recently moved into a mansion in Plymouth, Massachusetts, site of the first American Thanksgiving. You could afford the house only because of claims it’s haunted. Exploring the attic, you and Nick find a life-size wooden Indian boy, but nothing else of note. That night a sound awakens you from bed. A boy in Indian garb outside the house gestures for you to come join him, but should you go out in the moonlight, or run and get your parents?

Race downstairs to tell your mom and dad, and you find the kitchen closet door ajar, a space your dad forbade you and Nick from entering. Did your brother disobey? As you tiptoe inside, the door slams shut and you’re trapped with what looks like a giant turkey. Is it a ghost? Charge past the bird to escape out the grimy window, and it pursues you onto the lawn. Is it a real threat? If you attack the turkey instead of exiting the window, the cold-eyed bird fights back. This can’t be Nick pulling a prank. Lure the bird outside and down the old-fashioned water well, or trap it in the basement, and the danger ends. Your feathered foe may not be as spectral as you’d convinced yourself.

What if you follow the Indian boy outside instead of going to tell your parents? He leads you under silvery moonlight down into the well and through a hidden tunnel. The boy turns out to be the famed Indian Squanto, and he wants to show you the true significance of Thanksgiving. You're transported to the distant past, and see a family dressed in traditional Pilgrim wear. They look like your parents and Nick. Shadow them on their way to the community turkey shoot, and you may awaken from a haze surrounded by your own Pilgrim family. Is the modern life you know only an elaborate fever dream of the future? If you sneaked into the turkey shoot, you and Nick might get shot at by accident. Can you drag your brother back home? Is he your brother at all? If you continued following Squanto from the first and let Nick take care of his own situation, Squanto reveals what it’s like to hunt deer so your family can eat and live. This is true Thanksgiving gratitude…but what if choosing this experience over pursuing Nick means your brother permanently vanishes from the present day?

At first blush Spooky Thanksgiving reads like a typical Bantam Skylark Choose Your Own Adventure, riddled with plot inconsistencies. I no longer believe that. Yes, there are eccentric moments such as when you flap your arms and suddenly can fly, and certain crucial narrative facts arbitrarily change between one branch and another, but reality itself is a point of debate in these pages. Are you a modern-day kid, or a Pilgrim recovering from deadly illness that caused prolonged, vivid hallucinations? Perhaps that is the book's only ending in which you find reality. It’s a rare example of R. A. Montgomery’s weakness for metaphysical tangents working perfectly, pervading the book with a sense of unease that you’ll never know for sure the truth of the story you just experienced.

Spooky Thanksgiving and Sara Compton’s Stranded! are in a class by themselves as the two best Bantam Skylark Choose Your Own Adventure. This is one of the most effective gamebooks of R. A. Montgomery’s career, pairing ambitious concepts with atmospheric writing and illustrations by the great Ron Wing. Spooky Thanksgiving is much better than a holiday cash-in project needed to be. I return to this book every Thanksgiving with my family, and I hope others incorporate it into their traditions along with cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.

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