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Meanwhile (2010)

by Jason Shiga(Favorite Author)

3.87 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0810984237 (ISBN13: 9780810984233)

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

publisher

Harry N. Abrams

review 1: On a recent trip, I decided not to take the turn I usually take to get through Grand Island. I decided to keep heading north, hoping to find a drive-through coffee hut. I didn't find one, so I eventually turned and headed east to go home. Seconds later, a car was turning in front of me and I had nowhere to go but into the other vehicle. My decision to keep going north seemed simple and innocuous at the time, but it cost me a point on my driver's license and a driver's side headlight.This book reminded me of two things. First, it reminded me of the choose-your-own-adventure books I enjoyed in upper elementary. I like feeling like I am in charge of the story. It's different than those books, though, because of it's graphic format and reliance on lines or "tubes" to guide the... more reader's choices. It also reminded me of "Back to the Future." That's not a book, but it is media, and I enjoyed the crazy scientist.This is a fun way to illustrate that our actions have consequences. Making one choice over another can affect our day in small or large ways. It also demonstrates that the "good" or "safe" choice might be the least interesting. The main character got one kind of ice cream, he went home and that was that. He got a different kind of ice cream, he got a stomach ache and then a bunch of cool crazy stuff happened.
review 2: Meanwhile is a choose-your-own-adventure comic book. It's pretty cool. The cover states there are more than 3,000 possible paths to choose from. I didn't test out that claim, but I did try out quite a few. Some of them took me on radically different story lines, and some of them, not so much. Which is one reason this only gets 3 stars. And while the participatory nature of the book is cool, after awhile it got a little tiring, because you got to some dead ends pretty quickly and you had to root out answers and find secret codes. At times it felt almost more like a video game than a book. If the content/story had been fantastic, that would have been okay. But the story was only so-so. It was pretty standard mad scientist type stuff, so there was only so much work I was willing to do for it. less

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