Publication date: May 1, 2019
Choose Your Own Adventure SPIES: James Armistead Lafayette by Kyandreia Jones takes YOU to the heart of the American Revolutionary War. 9-12 year old readers will enact the life of an actual historic spy, James Armistead Lafayette, whose top secret espionage efforts were instrumental in helping the revolutionary forces defeat the British. And yet his story has been almost entirely left out of history books. Choose Your Own Adventure SPIES: James Armistead Lafayette is an interactive adventure book in which YOU decide what happens next.
The year is 1781 and George Washington is commanding thousands of troops in Yorktown, Virginia, on the brink of the most important battle of the war. You are James Armistead, a brave and literate enslaved person in Virginia. Marquis de Lafayette, one of Washington's key officers, approaches you with the most critical choice of your life: do you join the Revolutionary army as a top secret spy or find freedom on your own terms? As a spy for the revolution, you might change the course of history, but whose liberty will you really be fighting for?
My thoughts:
I loved choose your own adventure books as a kid, and I'm glad to see these more again now. This book is brilliant in that it has that active element of choosing your own adventure, while teaching you a lot of history along the way. Perfect for reluctant readers, and excellent timing for summer reading.
The back of the book gives you the story of James Armistead Lafayette and his work as a spy, despite his status as a slave. It also talks about his journey to freedom--fascinating and inspiring. I loved how the author really brings history (and James Armistead Lafayette as a person) to life in this book.
The book also gives you a short, by-year summary of the history of slavery and emancipation in the U.S.
I could see this making a great read-aloud for teachers--how fun to choose your own adventure as a class. Highly recommend.
**Publisher provided ARC for review**
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