Shadow of the Swastika

Choose Your Own Adventure #163

by Doug Wilhelm

As an underground operative for the Viennese resistance in 1938, the reader is a target of the Nazis, and can continue the adventure in a variety of ways.

Genres: Gamebooks, Choose Your Own Adventure

115 pages, Library Binding

First published August 1, 1995

About the author

Doug Wilhelm is the author of 17 books for young readers, including Street of Storytellers, a multi-award winning novel for YA and adult readers:

• Gold medal, YA fiction, 2020 Independent Press Awards
• Silver medal, teen fiction, 2020 Benjamin Franklin Awards
• Winner, young adult books, 2019 Independent Publishers of New England Book Awards
• Kirkus Reviews Indie Editors Choice

Doug's previous books include The Revealers, a novel about bullying that has been the focus of reading-and-discussion projects in over 1,000 U.S. middle schools, and True Shoes, the Revealers sequel on cyberbullying. Doug began writing for young people with the legendary Choose Your Own Adventure series, for which he has written 10 books. When he visits schools to talk about his books, kids notice that he is six feet ten inches tall!

http://www.dougwilhelm.com/
http://us.macmillan.com/author/dougwi...

Reviews

[Dane Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shadow of the Swastika by Doug Wilhelm is the second Choose Your Own Adventure book I have read by the same author, and it includes similar positives and negatives as the last one I read, The Gold Medal Secret. Shadow of the Swastika is actually set before World War II (not during) and takes place on the Night of Broken Glass; the fateful evening where the Nazis encouraged German citizens to run rampant, destroying shops and houses belonging to Jews. The reader takes on the role of a young man who isn't Jewish, but who works in a bakery owned by a Jewish man who raised him when his own parents had died. You must help your friends survive the night while also looking for opportunities to aid complete strangers in either getting out of the country or somehow continue living within it.
Doug Wilhelm's contributions to the Choose Your Own Adventure series are usually quite serious affairs, with both this book and the other work of his I have read (Gold Medal Secret, about doping in the Olympics). He doesn't pull any punches here, either, and doesn't spare the reader witnessing a few gruesome deaths or becoming the victim of one. I'm glad Wilhelm decided not to 'kidify' the material too much, though it does pose the question of how Bantam allowed the book to be greenlit. I for one am glad they did, though, because it's a cracking read.
In fact, it would almost be a perfect CYOA book if not for the same issues that plagued The Gold Medal Secret. That is, the book lacks interaction. There are only 8 decisions in the entire book for the reader to influence the story, whereas the rest are just singular routes throwing you from one page to another willy nilly for no reason other than to make the book seem more interactive than it actually is. However, I am a bit more willing to forgive this book for this shortcoming because the content was so thrilling.
I can definitely agree that Doug Wilhelm certainly knows how to write a gripping yarn, I just wish he'd do so with more interaction for the reader. After all, that's what CYOA is all about!

[Jessie Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking. Not kidding.

[Sara Millard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was absolutely amazing because it has suspense,adventure,and a death.