How a best-selling series gave young readers a new sense of agency.  Illustration by Tim Goschnick Do you want to go inside the dark cave you’ve just discovered, or maybe skip the risk and head back for the safety of home? Why not do both—one and then the other—and then go back to the beginning and start all over again with dozens of additional choices, pursuing as many different paths of a story as you can fit together, each a reimagining of what is possible? Sounds like a nice way to live, especially as you get older and options seem only to narrow. In an inventive story in this week’s issue, Leslie Jamison explores the creation and lasting appeal of the Choose Your Own Adventure books for kids, which have sold more than two hundred and seventy million copies since their launch, in 1979. It’s not just the power of choice that animates these books, Jamison writes, but a more expansive and fluid idea of time itself. “They understand that going back is the point—not the making but the re-making of choices, the revocability of it all. In childhood, you get to take things back. It’s a small compensation for having very little power in the first place.” —Ian Crouch, newsletter editor The 2022 National Book Awards: This week, The New Yorker is announcing the longlists for this year’s prizes. Up first, the nominees for Young People’s Literature » | 
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