Choose your own adventure

Your canoe hurtles into rapids. Your parents paddle madly to keep the canoe afloat. But the mighty Amazon rushes you towards explosions of water against boulders. ‘Get out!’ Dad yells at you, your sister, Jenny, and brother, Troy. Dad digs his paddle into the white water. The canoe swings towards the riverbank. ‘Grab those vines!’

Obey your dad, stay with him, and probably die.

Disobey and try to reach safety.

You obey your parents.
You rip off your lifejacket and sling on your backpack.
You, Troy and Jenny grab the vines and clamber up onto the tree branch. Your parents disappear into gigantic sprays of water. Troy looks at you. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We find Mum and Dad.’
The steep sides of the bank are slippery and dangerous. You must push through the jungle.

A man blocks your way. He has red feathers in his hair, bones through his earlobes, and a necklace of teeth. One side of his face and body is painted red, the other black. Is that a human or monkey skull hanging on his belt? An arrow is strung in his bow, ready to fire. Your mum, an expert on Amazon tribes, has told you rumours of cannibals in this jungle.


Run away, and maybe hear the hiss of a poisoned arrow?.

Follow the man and perhaps end up in the cooking pot? But his tribe could help you help find Mum and Dad. They’ll have boats, ropes, strong men and know the river.

You obey your parents.
You run away.
You run, hoping to see your parents past the rapids.
A black pig crashes away from you and leaps into a stream. The pig squeals and the water froths with blood. Piranhas. None of you will make it across. Monkeys shriek and thrash in the treetops. There is a panther nearby.
You’re eaten.
(The End)

Start the story again and try different options to see other endings to the story.

You follow the armed man.
He leads you to a village. Faces peer from doorways of huts. Smoke rises from a fire in the clearing, where a man is boiling something in a pot.
A little boy stumbles from a hut. The man drops his bow and picks up the boy. There are sores and pockmarks on his back, leg and arms. He is perspiring from fever.
More people leave their huts. Adults, babies, children are infected with chicken pox.
They go to the cooking fire, where the man puts herbs in boiling water, then dips a wooden cup into the medicine.
He looks at you with sad, exhausted eyes. With his finger, he draws a picture in the sand of a man with a chainsaw beside a fallen tree. Loggers have been here. One of them was infectious. This tribe have never had chicken pox and have no protection from the disease. Most of them could die.
In your backpack, you have a medicine kit with tablets for fever and gel for skin irritations. But your sister, Jenny, hasn’t had chicken pox.

Leave the village as you don’t want Jenny to get chicken pox.

Stay to help the villagers. In turn, they may help find your parents who could be clinging to rocks or drowning.

You leave the village.
You, Jenny and Troy are never seen again.
(The End)

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You stay.

You share your medicines. You draw pictures of your parents and the boat.
Three men lead you to a rope bridge across the stream, then down to a beach past the rapids. Your mum and dad are on the beach.
Your mum speaks enough of the tribal language to arrange for the men to take you by boat to the logging camp and bring back more medicines. You will radio for help.
You all live.
THINK: When you are safely home, what will you do to save the village from the loggers?

You disobey your parents and stay with them in the canoe.
Your boat is split by boulders, but a back-current casts you into a tiny inlet. You drag floating backpacks and wreckage from the water. The rapids crash only metres away. Out there is certain death.
A steep cliff rises above you. But dad has a broken leg. Mum makes a splint from sticks and strips of his shirt.
You can stay here and die of starvation, flash flood or that anaconda sliding along a branch. Or you can climb the narrow cliff path to seek signs of people. But snakes, tarantulas and poisonous frogs are up there, and the people you meet could be cannibals. You all decide to climb the cliff.
As you climb, you hear a pig scream where a stream runs into the Amazon, then the roar of a panther.
Troy yells up to you, ‘Fire ants!’
Three columns of deadly fire ants, able to devour a human in minutes, flow from the jungle, down the cliff towards your parents.

Try to get your father out of the way of the ants and up the cliff.

You risk the rapids.

You risk the rapids.
None of you are heard of again.
(The End)

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You try to get your father away from the ants and up the cliff.
Supported by Mum and you, Dad drags himself to one side of the inlet and up the cliff path.
You head towards a spiral of smoke and find a village. People are infected with chicken pox.

Retreat, to save Jenny who has never had the disease.

Enter the village to share your medicines and seek help from the people.

You retreat.
Your family is never seen again.
(The End)

Start the story again and try different options to see other endings to the story.

You enter the village.
Your mum speaks their language and learns that loggers have visited. You share your medicines. The shaman makes a medicine from leaves and applies it to your father’s leg.
Villagers take you by river to the loggers’ camp, where you collect more medicines for the village and radio for a seaplane to take you away.
THINK: When you are safely home, what will you do to save the village and jungle from destruction by the loggers?