Fairy House Disaster by Tina Connolly & Norm Grock

a Choose Your Own Adventure book!

Can I say how much I love Chooseco’s Dragonlark series of CYOAs for younger kids, and especially the ones with female protagonists? I remember always wishing I had books like Fairy House Disaster as a kid, instead of having to pretend to be some dopey pre-teen boy making less than stellar choices. Ofc, my history with playing CYOA book usually involves making less than stellar choices — why do my attempts to gather information so I can make sensible solutions always wind up getting punished, lolsob? — but it’s nice to have the option of doing that as a girl instead of being constantly shoehorned into the role of average white boy.

Fairy House Disaster itself is about YOU, a young girl (or, generously, female-presenting person) excited to enter her town’s Annual Gingerbread Contest. The grand prize is an electric scooter that will really help you go places, but especially to the ice cream store in town. Unfortunately, a mean kid named Oscar is already determined to make things difficult for you. When another girl named Heidi offers to team up with you, do you accept or do you decide to investigate the strange sparkly lights near Oscar’s workstation?

Over the course of the book, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to get involved with Fairyland while also competing in the gingerbread house-building contest. You’ll also, hopefully, learn both the meaning of friendship and that winning isn’t everything. While I did feel like all of my choices were perfectly cromulent and not deserving of some of the bad endings I received, I can see where the effort was made to inculcate the spirit of fair play and solidarity among children.

I didn’t love this book as much as the previous effort of this creative duo’s that I’ve reviewed, the even younger-skewing Glitterpony Farm. But it’s a lovely step up for readers wanting more CYOAs, and especially non-reductive female-coded ones, in their lives.

Fairy House Disaster by Tina Connolly & Norm Grock was published December 10 2024 by Chooseco and is available from all good booksellers, including