Monday, September 10, 2012

You Are Microscopic by Edward Packard

Title: You Are Microscopic (Choose Your Own Adventure #130)
Author: Edward Packard
Publication Date: 1992
Length: 128 pages (but you don't read them all)

Choose Your Own Adventure books are hilarious because the main characters are always kids, but people always treat them like adults. This one, for instance, starts with some kids who are in the science club at school calling up an actual scientist about his research. He then invites them to his lab, and lets them be the first people to test his microsphere, which makes you shrink. The government doesn't need to know, he says. He thinks they're qualified because they learned about the microscopic world in their science club. Umm, right.

Anywho. I'm gonna start using the second person, because that's how Choose Your Own Adventure books work. So, you chicken out and let your friends shrink down to microscopic size, but then they get stuck that way! So your first choice is whether you shrink down to try to save them, risking getting stuck yourself, or you don't, and the scientist does it, even though the process is not safe for adults.

The science was definitely interesting in this book, and there were some pretty cool endings, some involving shrinking really really small and seeing some pretty neat things, and another involving growing uncontrollably and being sent out into space. I did not know sufficient science to help me make good decisions along the way, but I followed every path in the story, so I got to see endings both happy and sad.

3 stars.

This book counts for the 2012 A-Z Book Challenge and the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.


  1. I didn't read the make your own adventure books when I was younger. Cool review.

    1. They were fun to read! Still are, but now as an adult they definitely seem a bit cheesier! :)