Books Like Choose Your Own Adventure

My kids are in love with this series right now! This is a super fun book in which the reader is the main character. You wake up in the fictional land of Astorya, a place where stories come to life. The reader writes, draws, and puzzles their way through the book to help tell the story.

It's a wild adventure, perfect for kids who love action and humor and we highly recommend it! Make sure to check out book 2 as well, The Edge of the Sword.

Find out more about the series here.

This is a great interactive book series for kids that prefer more realism and less fantasy. Step into the shoes of a Somalian boy escaping a war torn city and a terrorist organization to find a safe place to call home. The reader will cross a desert on foot and stowaway on a leaky boat.

It's a very compelling journey to freedom, written by a teacher known for her humanitarian work around the world. There are 2 more in the series: Break Your Chains (survive on the streets of London in 1825) and Move the Mountains ( follow your dreams in a small Italian village just after WWII).

If you have a video game player at home, this is a great way to keep them engaged away from the screen!

The reader is the hero of this video game, Cooper Hawke and The Secret of Phantom Island. Find clues in lost diaries, solve puzzles, and figure out what to do about killer bees and carnivorous plants. It's a real page turner and the interactive elements are super fun.

This is a great 3 book series of Interactive Prehistoric Adventures. The reader gets sent thousands of years back in time and they have to figure out how to survive in a climate and landscape very different from our modern day world. These are highly appealing!

Also check out the Jurassic Period and the Cretaceous Period for more thrilling adventure.

This is a super cool series of interactive choose-your-own adventure books! They're educational, but don't worry, your kids won't even notice because they'll be having too much fun solving puzzles, playing games, and doodling their way through a historical adventure. I can't say enough good things about these books. Make sure you check out Escape this Book! Titanic too.

I have two serious American Girl fans at my house so this series has been a big hit. We especially like this one because it's set in New Mexico, where we live!

The reader gets to step into Josefina's world in 1824 and work on a ranch in the desert. My girls love these! Check out more of the American Girl: My Journey books here.

This series of books was created by a group of performers who wanted to bring kids' writing to life through sketch comedy. The result is a series of books that are highly entertaining and really engaging for kids. They're also an absolutely genius way to teach creative writing to kids.

In this one, a janitor who wishes he was a scientist, and a shy scientist who wishes she had friends, have an accident at the lab and end up being sent back to the stone age. Throughout the book is a clever writing guide for kids to help them write their own adventure story.

This is another in the Story Pirates series, but in this one you have a handy writing guide that goes along with the story to help young readers/writers write their own mystery story. And this one is written by one of my favorite children's book authors (and a master of mystery) Jacqueline West.

Eliza is a ghost hunter who thinks its going to be a boring summer helping her scientist mother study plants. But when a mysterious plant goes missing and things start to get spooky, Eliza is on the job!

And if you love these Story Pirates books like we do, make sure to also check out the third book too, a Fantasy Adventure: Quest for the Crystal Crown.

Do you have a Minecraft fan at your house? In this clever book you wake up as a zombie in the Minecraft world. The big catch is that you can't talk, you can only make grumbly noises and hold your arms straight out in front of you. But, you still have to figure out how to get home. Depending on the choices you make as you read, there are 25 different ways this story could end.

There are 3 books in this series.

Note: this is available for free on Kindle Unlimited

I loved Mad Libs when I was a kid and my own children love Mad Libs now. This is extra fantastic because it's a 21 chapter Mad Libs mystery novel that you can solve over and over again. Highly recommend this for Mad Libs fans.

I LOVED playing the Oregon Trail as a kid and I loved reading this interactive Oregon Trail book with my kids. Making survival choices as you read actually feels a lot like playing the old game.

Note: this is available for free on Kindle Unlimited

In this book you step into the shoes of a Ninja in feudal Japan and serve as a deadly soldier for hire. It's an exciting choose your own adventure book with a lot of great accurate historical information throughout.

If these appeal to your reader, also check out Life as a Gladiator, Life as a Viking, and Life as a Knight.

We adore fractured fairytales at our house and this 9 book series has been a big hit! They are all familiar fairytales, but much wackier than you've ever heard them told before. Readers can join the three bears, Cinderella, and even Jack and the Beanstalk and help them choose adventures like they've never had before.

Note: This book, and others in the series, are free with Kindle Unlimited

If fending for yourself in an anarchist society after most of the population has been decimated appeals to you, then this is the choose your own adventure book to start with!

In fact, there's a whole series of You Choose: Doomsday books that you'll love! Virus Outbreaks, Zombie Apocalypse, Alien Invasions, and more!

Note: Most of this series is available for free on Kindle Unlimited.

If you love Goosebumps, then you'll love R.L. Stine's choose your own adventure series called Give Yourself Goosebumps. Scary stories that readers interact with and choose the own paths to the ending. Spooky, just like you'd expect from Stine.

This 9 book series is a fun spin off of the original Choose Your Own Adventure books. Best of all, the entire series is free on Kindle Unlimited!

This 3 book mystery series are some of my kids favorite books like choose your own adventure books. Carlos Serrano is a kid trying to help his sick mom save her failing detective agency. Along with his best friend Eliza and her strange little brother, they solve wild mysteries that the reader has to help with.

Kids draw their way through this funny story and it's awesome! The story is told by a Duck and he narrates with humor as you try to figure out who's been stealing all the pizza in town. Also check out The Search for Slimy Space Slugs. I've had to buy multiple copies of these because my kids fight over them.

In this interactive chapter book, you can pick which character you want to be (Alice, the Mad Hatter, or the Queen) and then make choices as you travel through wonderland. The illustrations are especially fun!

Note: this book is free on Kindle Unlimited

This is an 11 book series with fantastic choose your own adventure stories. In this first book you have to use a century-old, cryptic journal to find Atraharsis, the legendary lost city beneath the sands. A perfect series for kids who love adventure!

And last, but not least, instead of reading books like choose your own adventure, you can always just read the books that started it all!