While I assumed this would be the case, I learned that yes, “choose your own adventures” or in this case, “follow the orders of the creatures in the book so you can flip pages left and right,” in an online format is next to impossible for me to read. Simon Turns Right by Nicole van Brummelen seems like it would be a fun story. And if it had been straight forward (you went from page one to two to three to four….) it would have. Now, it would not have been as clever or interactive, and probably I would not have wondered about it in the final format (which is due mid March 2026), but it also would not have been aggravating to my headache.
With that said, I think I like this book. I think that the idea of having kids (and parents, teachers and any adult who reads children’s books for whatever reason) turning the pages back and forth is neat. This is clever and mostly original. Granted, the “choose your own adventure” format is not new, or even interactive books are not new, but this is feeling fresh. It would have been a lot more fun if I could easily jump from the seagull page to the whale page, or back to the penguins and off to the kangaroo, but a quick flipping through showed that our friend Simon the Gull has a lot of adventures because of a common mistake.
When you read this picture book, you will probably be having so much fun you will not worry about how a seagull can be deep enough in the ocean to talk to a whale or meet a dinosaur, but you will probably wonder about what Simon’s next adventure will be. I see a series of Simon books coming. We did left and right, so now we can do other directions, numbers, letters and maybe explain why penguins know that the kangaroo might have answers Simon needs.