Decide & Survive: The Destruction of Pompeii (Bushel & Peck, 2024)
If You Meet the Devil, Don’t Shake Hands (Regal House Publishing/Fitzroy Books, 2023)
A fast-paced, interactive adventure series for kids, featuring death-defying moments in history! This time featuring the destruction of Pompeii!
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy in 79 A.D. is perhaps the most famous disaster in world history. Young readers make decisions and determine their own survival by joining the inhabitants of Pompeii in the days and hours before and after the devastation in Decide and Survive: Destruction of Pompeii.
Don’t forget: YOU, the reader, are in the driver’s seat! This time, you’re eleven-year-old Quintus, a Roman scribe and slave who’s tasked with saving civilization, and himself, from a huge obstacle—a live volcano! With each page turn YOU decide which way the story, and mystery, unravels.
A book like no other—to be used in a variety of ways—challenges puzzle-solving readers and ignites a love of history for life. The perfect gift or educational book, slyly written as an interactive narrative adventure, will delight and enthrall avid and reluctant readers with its energy and excitement.
An added educational bonus, extensive backmatter includes a timeline and information about how we’re still learning about the tragedy.
Available from indie online bookseller Bookshop.org, or other local and national booksellers.
Bonus Back Matter!
Series review in School Library Journal (Elementary)
Twelve-year-old Gavin Baker, son of a warrior, is a born worrier. With his father serving overseas, Gavin assumes that he’s already imagined the worst that can happen—until he shakes hands with his best friend Javi’s long-lost grandfather and finds himself trapped in the old magician’s ailing body.
Help!
As the trickster takes over Gavin’s life, fooling the girl of his dreams and even his own family, Gavin wonders if the imposter is a better version of Gavin than Gavin himself. He has to convince Javi that the real Gavin now has hairy knuckles and a love of Pablo Neruda’s poetry. Then the boys can try some tricks of their own. But will the two friends be able to reverse the old devil’s magic? Or will both of their families get their hearts broken?
Available from Regal House Publishing/Fitzroy Books, indie Bookshop online, or local and national booksellers.
Review: Unleashing Readers
Interview: Smack Dab in the Middle
Sylvia Whitman 