The Oregon Trail: Choose Your Own Trail! by Jesse Wiley - OPTIONAL

The Oregon Trail: Choose Your Own Trail! by Jesse Wiley. CHAPTER BOOK. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. $15. 

1 - The Race to Chimney Rock - 159 pages  

2 - Danger at the Haunted Gate - 159 pages  

3 - The Search for Snake River - 159 pages  

4 - The Road to Oregon City - 175 pages 

Language: G (0 swears); Mature Content: PG; Violence: PG

BUYING ADVISORY: EL - OPTIONAL

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

In this series of books, broken up into four books based on different sections of the Oregon trail, the reader assumes a decision making role. The book is told in second person point of view, telling “you,” the reader, what is happening and what decision needs to be made. For each decision you jump to a different page in the book. The very first decision you have to make is whether to leave on your journey early in the spring and risk your animals not having grazing grass, or leave later and risk running into winter. The final decision you make leads to about half negative outcomes, death included, and half positive. 

My kids liked reading these books in small chunks, but they never felt invested in them. It is interesting to see what one might run into on the trail, but you never form an attachment to a character. The very nature of choosing your own plot makes character development virtually impossible. The trail details are all summarized in the trail guides, spoiling much of the plot points. The choose your own adventure element may very well hook a few reluctant readers, but there is not much literary value to speak of here.  The nostalgia of reading these books after playing the game growing up will be lost on young readers, but does score the book a few brownie points for parents who may be reading these aloud to kids. 

Jen Wecker, HS English Teacher