Antarctica!

by Lily Simonson

Drawing on her experience living at a scientific research base in Antarctica, debut author Lily Simonson brings the stark continent to life in the brand new CYOA classic Antarctica! YOU are a young scientist working on your latest experiment and have lived in Antarctica for over a year. After a routine day out in the field, you’re about to board a helicopter back to your research base, when you receive word that one of your colleagues has gone missing. Do you delay your return to help the rescue team, or do you head back to base to work on your experiment, which could be ruined if you don’t return soon? Whatever you choose, you will soon find yourself on an unexpected adventure―filled with treachery, intrigue, and aliens!

Genres: Choose Your Own Adventure

144 pages, Paperback

Published October 4, 2022

Reviews

[Brandon D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty fun book for the kiddos. Pretty thick with global warming opinions, which we’re probably too heavy for my 7-year old. He was more interested in the aliens and CIA and not dying! Turning into a zombie was comical and was way more desirable than death in his opinion! At the end of the day, it was super fun to read together and although we did not survive our choices a few times, we did find some stories that were exciting and satisfying at their conclusion!

[Chesca · Rating 4 out of 5]

July 2025. Tracked down a Choose Your Own Adventure for nostalgia’s sake and enjoyed it with my boys (6 & 8). So far we’ve survived twice and died once; but there’s supposed to be aliens in here somewhere, which we haven’t found—to my younger son’s great disappointment. Perhaps we’ll keep going back to make different choices until we find them. Anyway, it’s just as fun and weird as I remember from my younger days.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was really good! It had all the fun and outrageous storylines of an old CYOA book, but with updated and a lot of true science facts. There is even a glossary in the back that seperates out some of the fact verses fiction.

[Jessica WS · Rating 5 out of 5]

My eight-year-old insisted we give this book five stars because she loves it. It's fun to read, full of adventure, and contains all kinds of characters and information and situations that don't occur in other children's books. I think all the Choose Your Own Adventure books are absolute trash, but at least the ones that aren't deeply disturbing (such as the Mayan adventure book, which I didn't let my kid have after I skimmed it) don't have any bad values or disturbing emotional situations, so I think they're an okay choice for junk books.

[Erythor Silvertip · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a scientist, I was pretty impressed by the accuracy of this book (it was clear Simonson had done her research, as it were). My only complaint is that there were so few positive endings, particularly in the zombie pathway. But this is definitely one of the best offerings in the series as it stands today, along with Blood Island, Terror on the Titanic, and the gold standard Cup of Death. More like this, please, CYOA!

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely delightful and gripping read, start to finish to finish to finish. :) I had the chance to see the author talk about her experience researching and writing the book today at the Bay Area Book Festival, and was blown away by how good this little book was! A great mix of fantasy and science, with some beautiful descriptions of the alien-like environment of Antarctica. I haven’t read a CYOA book since I was a kid, and this really surpassed my expectations.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book! Lily expertly shares real Antarctic locations and science based on her time there living and working with science teams, and weaves in a touch of fun by including aliens in the twists and turns of the adventure choices. Choose your own adventure books are a fun read for 8 - 12 year olds who love advenutre, but honestly anyone who is curious to learn more about Antarctica through a light hearted and easy read.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

First sentence: The wind nearly pushes you over as you heave yourself up into the helicopter.

Premise/plot: In a choose your own adventure book, obviously, you the reader make almost all of the decisions. Instructions at the bottom of each page show you where to go next. In this one, YOU, a scientist/researcher are stationed in Antarctica.

My thoughts: I always have a pen and paper in hand so I can track my choices and find all the endings. The cover on goodreads seems to think there are seventeen endings possible. The book in hand say twenty-five possible endings.

Did I enjoy this one? Not really. The endings were either pure calamity--leading to death. OR the endings were didactic hitting you on the head with climate change agenda. The 'happy' 'mildly happy' endings all had a message to preach.

[Cassie Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit preachy but my son enjoyed it a lot!

[Autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just LOVE Choose Your Own Adventure books!

[Jacek · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable Choose Your Own Adventure book set in the eponymous continent. In one branch you can encounter potentially benevolent aliens from Europa who want to try to help fix global climate change via bioengineering, and are being opposed by the CIA. In the other branch, you get to deal with colleagues who are playing God with a nematode-derived serum that creates zombies. The second branch can get rather dark, and there are few good endings in it. I also appreciated that the first branch left it up to the reader’s interpretation as to whether the aliens are truly benevolent, and if it is best to work with them, or not.

[AS · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn’t finish
I have read a number of non-fiction books about Antarctica lately, and thought it would be fun to try a fiction book for kids. The author has spent time in Antarctica and there is a lot of interesting scientific information in it, so that’s nice to see in a kids’ book. On the other hand, I was quickly reminded why I didn’t read very many Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid! It gets creepy and unsettling really, really quickly. Way too many absolutely awful endings, and the constantly ominous tone is seriously off-putting. And the CIA? Aliens??… in Antarctica? What the actual heck. I don’t think it’s necessary to add that kind of nonsense when Antarctica is already such an unusual and interesting place on its own.
I gave up on it and passed it on to a Little Free Library.