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Carmen Sandiego: Chase Your Own Caper
Endangered Operation
Join Carmen Sandiego and decide where in the world to go next in this globe-trotting, daring caper! Help Carmen save wild animals of all kinds, especially the rare Amur tiger cub kidnapped from you by VILE. With 20 possible endings, your adventures can take you all over the world—or out of the game. Which will you choose?In this choose-your-own-caper story set in the world of Carmen Sandiego, you are a junior zookeeper caring for a rare newborn Amur tiger cub. VILE, in its latest plot, is stealing exotic animals to sell to a billionaire collector, and your charge is cub-napped! Carmen arrives and you decide the best way to get your cub back is to help her defeat VILE and rescue all the animals they’ve captured. Or do you? Twenty different endings to this story keep readers coming back for more adventures with Carmen Sandiego!
164 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2019
39 people are currently reading
94 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 10, 2023
This book was recommended by my school librarian.
This is the first book I've read which involves a "choose your story" interaction. I am pleased with exploring this new type of genre and, would love to read more books where you make your own choices leading to various endings!
This is the first book I've read which involves a "choose your story" interaction. I am pleased with exploring this new type of genre and, would love to read more books where you make your own choices leading to various endings!
August 8, 2023
It was fun to follow different stories for a different ending.
November 30, 2021
I loved reading choose your own adventure books as a kid, so it was an extra treat to have to read one for work. Perhaps what impresses me most about this book is that there's well researched trivia about countries and animals that would be quite eye-opening even for adults. also, unlike the CYOA titles of the past (Goosebumps for example), every choice does diverge into its own ending. I remember playing other CYOA books that sort of tricked and funnelled readers into the same paths, which made it feel sort of lazy. This book does none of that and every decision leads to a different ending, which is very laudable. It is also not afraid to shy away from implying violent and tragic endings, which I would have thought is not very acceptable in this day and age for children's titles, but I guess I was (pleasantly) proven wrong.
A good book I would definitely recommend to children to get them reading. And I might actually read the other titles in the series just to see what other stories they can offer. I know one of the books starts in Singapore where I live so thats quite a treat!
A good book I would definitely recommend to children to get them reading. And I might actually read the other titles in the series just to see what other stories they can offer. I know one of the books starts in Singapore where I live so thats quite a treat!
May 14, 2025
This one was very, very fun! I wish there were more than two of these because honestly it's pretty fantastic and I would read a lot of these lol. Pretty simple, but not obvious which choices are going to lead to what!
And if you're curious about what path will let you ...
;3
And if you're curious about what path will let you ...
;3
September 16, 2020
Miss 6 really enjoyed this. There is good variety with the different story outcomes and a feeling that a little learning is woven into the book as well!
Miss 6 and I like to explore different books and authors at the library, sometimes around particular topics or themes. We try to get different ones out every week or so; it's fun for both of us to have the variety and to look at a mix of new & favourite authors.
Miss 6 and I like to explore different books and authors at the library, sometimes around particular topics or themes. We try to get different ones out every week or so; it's fun for both of us to have the variety and to look at a mix of new & favourite authors.
February 20, 2020
I read this with my kindergarten son Calvin. He loved choosing the options, and my third grader loved following the trails to find the best possible ending. I liked the facts interspersed. I consider these books "read" when I've reached a couple different endings.
November 3, 2019
Choose your own adventure! Blast from the past.
December 17, 2019
This is a great title for students who are reluctant readers and like interactive reading.
June 19, 2023
This was a super cute choose your own adventure book, they did it really well so it's easy to get a good ending, and fun to backtrack and read the different endings also.
February 16, 2020
Review from my Carmen fansite:
This is not the first time there have been Choose Your Own Adventure-style Carmen books; Golden published the You Are the Detective series in the early ’90s, when the genre was at its most popular. Now, admittedly I’m not huge on the genre to begin with, partially because I find the second person present tense writing style awkward, though these two do handle it better than, say, the Scooby-Doo series I read as a kid.
But I just wasn’t feeling this one, regardless. Carmen doesn’t even show up in half the paths: it’s really more focused on VILE than on Team Red. The setup for the books is also kind of iffy, as the reader character in each is an everyday person who somehow encounters Carmen as she tries to head off a VILE theft at their workplace. In contrast, the reader’s role in You Are the Detective was self-explanatory, and while the detective role was gimmicked up, it made more sense for the reader character, given that it was the same as that of the player character in the computer games.
On the other hand, it did afford the opportunity for the infodumps to be a bit less info-dumpy than in the show, since they’re split among Player, Carmen, the reader character, and the narrative itself. They’re still awkward, but not nearly as awkward as on the show.
I guess I was also expecting more of a focus on, oh, the endangered animals the story’s built on. Instead, there’s very little, the bare minimum to move the plot forward.
Compared to the first two HMH books (the excellent Who in the World and the very good Clue by Clue), this was a disappointment. 3/5.
(An additional note regarding the format of the two CYOCs: the eBook edition adds a link back to the previous choice at the end of each passage, which was a super helpful addition to the format as it allows you to backtrack without starting back at the beginning. I wish that the page number had similarly been included in the print copy.)
This is not the first time there have been Choose Your Own Adventure-style Carmen books; Golden published the You Are the Detective series in the early ’90s, when the genre was at its most popular. Now, admittedly I’m not huge on the genre to begin with, partially because I find the second person present tense writing style awkward, though these two do handle it better than, say, the Scooby-Doo series I read as a kid.
But I just wasn’t feeling this one, regardless. Carmen doesn’t even show up in half the paths: it’s really more focused on VILE than on Team Red. The setup for the books is also kind of iffy, as the reader character in each is an everyday person who somehow encounters Carmen as she tries to head off a VILE theft at their workplace. In contrast, the reader’s role in You Are the Detective was self-explanatory, and while the detective role was gimmicked up, it made more sense for the reader character, given that it was the same as that of the player character in the computer games.
On the other hand, it did afford the opportunity for the infodumps to be a bit less info-dumpy than in the show, since they’re split among Player, Carmen, the reader character, and the narrative itself. They’re still awkward, but not nearly as awkward as on the show.
I guess I was also expecting more of a focus on, oh, the endangered animals the story’s built on. Instead, there’s very little, the bare minimum to move the plot forward.
Compared to the first two HMH books (the excellent Who in the World and the very good Clue by Clue), this was a disappointment. 3/5.
(An additional note regarding the format of the two CYOCs: the eBook edition adds a link back to the previous choice at the end of each passage, which was a super helpful addition to the format as it allows you to backtrack without starting back at the beginning. I wish that the page number had similarly been included in the print copy.)
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews