Item - Could You Be a Mouse?

(review based on the Spanish translation)

This is the sixth and final book in a series of British gamebooks for children where the reader plays some kind of wild animal facing several survival challenges. While I remember seeing Spanish versions of these books in Mexican bookstores back in the early nineties, I never had the chance to acquire one until very recently, while browsing around a used bookshop. All the sections in this book are illustrated with photographs of different locations where a mouse could go foraging for food, and most sections cover a two-page spread. While the photographs are far from being masterpieces (particularly due to an extensive use of photomontage), the book deserves credit for accompanying the visual element with enough researched data to make this a worthwhile educational tool for children (also noteworthy is the fact that the writer was the same person who took the photographs for this book). Moreover, there is an interesting game aspect, as the player is asked to keep track of a score (which increases with good choices and decreases with every mistake), and number of moves required to reach the final goal, thus being able to make head-to-head comparisons.

Despite the fact that an adult will probably not need more than an hour to finish this book, I found it to be a refreshing and entertaining read. Although finding a way to the successful ending is not too hard, there are several choices which require careful observation of the illustrations and logical thought, and the death endings always make sense. The interactive element and the text manage to build up tension effectively and to help the reader picture what it is to be a wild mouse. Despite the short section length, I had fun exploring the many different settings and finding the weaknesses of the wild animals the player character is often faced against. Overall, I enjoyed myself more while playing this book than I did while reading several of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Definitely recommended if you want something different than the standard gamebook fare.

My high score: 91

More reviews by Guillermo

[Rating: 2/10]
[Recommended? NO]

The Survival gamebooks, for all their variety, follow the same format and aim to do precisely the same thing: invoke in younger readers the beginning steps of logic-based decising-making skills from the perspective of a wild animal (in this case, a mouse). There's a delightfully educational approach that is at once encouraging and objective, and a uniquely semi-expansive photographic format that makes for an unusually immersive experience for children (at least superficially) - pages themselves consist of little text at times, though, instead offering a pictorical "go to this place by turning to that page". However, I found the writing to be rather uninspired, the book easy to sweep through in no time at all, the scoring system to be somewhat unremarkable, and the book itself to be a little more depressing than necessary. This is a book that had great intentions and brilliant potential - but the concept doesn't really translate into a replayable classic or even a book with much lasting literary worth once younger readers have gone through the survival game once. Again, it's a good idea with mismatched execution - and a tough book to recommend to most readers as well. ^^

(Mysteriously disappears into the shadows.)

More reviews by Shadeheart