Choose Your Own Adventure: Eighth Grade Witch
Eighth Grade Witch is an action-oriented comic book with a fun and vibrant art style. It is written by Andrew E.C. Gaska, E.L. Thomas, and C.E. Simpson with art by Valerio Chiola, Thiago Ribeiro, Leandro Casca, and lettering by Joamette Gil. Readers who enjoyed supernatural YA fiction and Choose Your Own Adventure books will likely be fans of this title as well.
Based on the hit Choose Your Own Adventure book of the same name, Eighth Grade Witch follows Rabbit as they move to a creepy new house and a mischievous community. Will you learn more about the mysterious witch Prudence Dudley? Or explore a graveyard to expose fiendish teens who want to vandalize your new home? The paths are many, but you get to choose which one you will take.
Eighth Grade Witch is published by Oni Press and is available on August 25, 2021.
Choose Your Own Adventure: Eighth Grade Witch – Story
Like many traditional Choose Your Own Adventure books, this story is told from the first-person perspective. You are Rabbit, an eighth-grader who has just moved to a new town with their parents, who happen to be demonologists. Rabbit quickly finds out that their new house is haunted and that one of your new neighbors, Astrid, has plans with other children to toilet paper your house.
This is around the time where your choices start to impact the story. You can keep reading the text messages between Astrid and the other kids in the neighborhood or join the conversation yourself. Depending on what you choose, you can lead Rabbit into several different situations. Each one makes the story more interesting and complicated.
You can retrace your steps and flip through for new endings easily, whether you are reading the story digitally or paperback.
Choose Your Own Adventure: Eighth Grade Witch – Art
The art in this book is easy to love. It has a cartoon-like style but still feels very much like a traditional comic. Chiola does an excellent job balancing between a fun young adult book and the spooky vibe the story requires.
Most of the color choices in the book are subtle, but I noticed that certain colors were used to highlight different objects of interest in the scene, like Rabbit’s red backpack that later gets swapped for Astrid’s red backpack. As the reader, it was obvious to me that those two objects were important to the story, so I kept my eye on them, thanks to their bright color.
Choose Your Own Adventure: Eighth Grade Witch Conclusion
The story is a charming and engaging mystery that is perfect for its target audience and older readers. I found myself retracing my page turns so I could find out what the other endings were. The gender of the main character is not determined, so this book works for all readers.
If you have a pre-teen or teenage reader in your life who likes comic books, this would be a great story to pick up. It would also be perfect for a teenage newcomer to comics.
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