Statue of Liberty Adventure

Choose Your Own Adventure #58

by Ellen Kushner

As a student on a class trip to New York City, the reader is asked to make choices to determine the outcome of a dangerous adventure at the Statue of Liberty.

Genres: Choose Your Own Adventure, Fiction, Childrens, Gamebooks, Young Adult

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Ellen Kushner weaves together multiple careers as a writer, radio host, teacher, performer and public speaker.

A graduate of Barnard College, she also attended Bryn Mawr College, and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She began her career in publishing as a fiction editor in New York City, but left to write her first novel Swordspoint, which has become a cult classic, hailed as the progenitor of the “mannerpunk” (or “Fantasy of Manners”) school of urban fantasy. Swordspoint was followed by Thomas the Rhymer (World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award), and two more novels in her “Riverside” series. In 2015, Thomas the Rhymer was published in the UK as part of the Gollancz “Fantasy Masterworks” line.

In addition, her short fiction appears regularly in numerous anthologies. Her stories have been translated into a wide variety of languages, including Japanese, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Latvian and Finnish.

Upon moving to Boston, she became a radio host for WGBH-FM. In 1996, she created Sound & Spirit, PRI’s award-winning national public radio series. With Ellen as host and writer, the program aired nationally until 2010; many of the original shows can now be heard archived online.

As a live stage performer, her solo spoken word works include Esther: the Feast of Masks, and The Golden Dreydl: a Klezmer ‘Nutcracker’ for Chanukah (with Shirim Klezmer Orchestra). In 2008, Vital Theatre commissioned her to script a full-scale theatrical version. The Klezmer Nutcracker played to sold-out audiences in New York City, with Kushner in the role of the magical Tante Miriam.

In 2012, Kushner entered the world of audiobooks, narrating and co-producing “illuminated” versions of all three of the “Riverside” novels with SueMedia Productions for Neil Gaiman Presents at Audible.com—and winning a 2013 Audie Award for Swordspoint.

Other recent projects include the urban fantasy anthology Welcome to Bordertown (co-edited with Holly Black), and The Witches of Lublin, a musical audio drama written with Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom (which one Gabriel, Gracie and Wilbur Awards in 2012). In 2015 she contributed to and oversaw the creation of the online Riverside series prequel Tremontaine for Serial Box with collaborators Joel Derfner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Racheline Maltese and Patty Bryant.

A dauntless traveler, Ellen Kushner has been a guest of honor at conventions all over the world. She regularly teaches writing at the prestigious Clarion Workshop and the Hollins University Graduate Program in Children’s Literature.

Ellen Kushner is a co-founder and past president of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, an organization supporting work that falls between genre categories. She lives in New York City with author and educator Delia Sherman, a lot of books, airplane and theater ticket stubs, and no cats whatsoever.

Reviews

[ᏒᎦᏔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

My dad is cleaning out his house and found a box of his old Choose Your Own Adventure books. He read these when he was a kid and when I was old enough to handle yellowed and cracking books, he let me read them.

I was SO excited to get my hands on these books again. Statue of Liberty Adventure was by far my favorite. I really enjoyed how different the adventure choices are. You get a fun mystery or a historical adventure!

While some of the choices are a little bland or not actually choices, I still enjoyed it! It was like walking through the past for me. I immediately look the route of going back in time and tried every outcome for it. I'm planning on reading it again soon and taking the mystery route.

[Bella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I didn’t find the treasure, it was a fun and interesting read with many twists and turns. I look forward to trying again with this book in the future and maybe reading some other stories as well.

[Natalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the adventure book idea but there is no logic in it. It's just: do you go up the rope ladder and the rope snaps and you die or do you go downstairs, slip, fatally hit your head and die?

[Rick Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plenty cool choices, but if several gangsters threaten you to climb the chain to the Statue of Liberty's crown, don't do it. You either die or break your arm.

[Samantha Glasser · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book when I was in elementary school, and the thing I most remember about it is the flying squirrel that plays a big part. While on a school field trip, you are being pursued and have to find a way to escape, and there are many places in the statue of liberty to hide, but not all of them are good ones.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think they did a good job of blending some history into the story. It was entertaining.