Frankenstein: Your Classics. Your Choices.

by M.D. Payne (Adapter), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

In these literary classics, you make the choices. Readers explore alternative paths, new character developments, shocking new endings, and surprising plot twists, told in the same voice as Mary Shelley's original.

Beloved Monster Juice author, M.D. Payne, explores the madness inside and provides alternative endings to Mary Shelley's classic tale in our series of choice-driven books that expand on the narratives of literary classics. New options allow readers to explore additional characters and settings. Some lead to new endings, while others send readers back into the original storyline. Fans of literary classics will delight in seeing their favorite stories given new life, and reluctant readers will discover the classics through the engaging format of an interactive story.

Genres: Horror

192 pages, Paperback

Published August 17, 2021

About the author

M. D. Payne was born in 1978 in New Hampshire to an Air Force Family and grew up in 11 different homes in Maine, California, Idaho, Florida, Virginia, Ohio, and Germany. As a child, he was a ravenous reader. While in elementary school, his favorite past-time was creating cut-and-paste scrapbooks of presidential facts that remain in his mother's possession today. M. D. has been a fan of Halloween and horror into adulthood, so he jumped at the chance to write marketing and creative copy for the famed GOOSEBUMPS series in 2007, and was soon pulled into the world of kidlit. He wrote his first books, the gross-out horror series MONSTER JUICE, from 2012–2014, and then became involved in the NY Times bestselling WHO WAS series, tackling spooky titles like "Who Is R. L. Stine?" and "What is the Story of Scooby-Doo?"

Before M. D. was a writer, he was a Jazz DJ, wrote scripts for Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio, and was associate producer on Essentially Ellington recordings and public radio programs such as "Honky Tonks, Hymns, and the Blues" and "W.C. Handy’s Blues." He took that decade of experience and poured it into the WHO WAS book on Jazz legend Duke Ellington. "Who Was Duke Ellington?" will be available December 1, 2020.

A fan of kids, reading, and especially kids who read, M. D. gives presentations on reading and writing to children and parents alike at numerous schools around the country, and around the world via Skype. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two daughters.

Reviews

[Titus Chapman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great Frankenstein kid's book! It had almost everything I wanted! The main thing it was missing was a storyline through the monster's point of view.

You were able to follow the original storyline, which was neat, but it also had many other sad, fun, and tragic branching storylines as well! The choices, even the smallest ones, affected the storyline's trajectory in a big way, so you knew you wouldn't end up in the same place as last time. There were only a couple choices that basically affected nothing, but only a couple. It wasn't too badly written for a children's book.

The book had a wide variety of storylines, ranging from the classic Frankenstein story, making a monster dog, building an army, to raising the monster to be kind and caring. Depending on what you might be looking for in a revisionist Frankenstein story, this book has a good chance to deliver, within the limitations of being solely through Victor's point of view, and being acceptable for children, but that is the nature of choose your own adventure books.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frankenstein: You are the Classics, by Mary Shelley, and M.D. Payne.
Expectations exceeded reality. I was hoping for an immersive experience much like when I was a kid reading ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories.
It is from the POV of Victor and plays on the pop-culture persona of the mad scientist. It takes some weird turns, such as Elizabeth falling in love with the Creature and then out of jealousy Victor makes an Elizabeth II (i.e. female version of the Creature) for himself. Both sets of couples live happily ever after and produce children and grandchildren. Not exactly echoing the ethos of Shelley’s vision, but, oh well. Fun here if you are looking for following various pathways in your storied imagination. ***

[Mandy Crumb · Rating 2 out of 5]

The unnecessary gore at the very beginning of this book was an accurate portrait of what was to come next. I'll be donating my copy.
I wouldn't recommend this one to elementary readers but middle school should be fine.