Spies: James Armistead Lafayette (Choose Your Own Adventure)

In this history-inspired spin-off from the venerable Choose Your Own Adventure line, readers adopt the persona of James Armistead Lafayette, an enslaved person who becomes a spy during the American Revolution. As typical for the CYOA brand, the plot offers numerous branching points where any one of multiple choices can drastically alter the course of the story and lead to happy endings or dire consequences. Depending on their decisions, readers might meet Gen. George Washington and aid the Revolutionary Army, seek freedom elsewhere, or suffer horrible fates—such as being killed in the line of duty, eaten by wolves, or, in a more fanciful narrative, granted glimpses of the future. With so many different plotlines and endings, the details of Lafayette’s actual career are difficult to discern, though a short, appended biography fills in historical facts, as does as a timeline of slavery and emancipation in the U.S. The plots are swift and snappy, and the format, a tried-and-true gimmick that has persisted for decades, lends itself well to multiple rereads and interactivity, if not to a clear historical record. Ages 8–12. (May)