The Exquisite Corpse Adventure - OPTIONAL

The Exquisite Corpse Adventure: a Progressive Story Game Played By 20 Celebrated Authors and Illustrators, 276  p. National Children’s Book and Literary Alliance, 2011. Language: G (0 swears, 0 'f') Violence: G, Mature Content: G.  Twins Joe and Nancy leave the circus where they were raised to look for their missing parents who abandoned them as babies nearly eleven years earlier.  Accompanied by a guardian Pig, and encountering many friends, helpers and villains, Joe and Nancy go on the adventure of their lives to rescue their parents, find the parts to “the exquisite corpse” and battle alien invaders.  This book was originally published online in serial form by the  Library of Congress.  The authors contributed their stories one chapter at a time building on the previous chapter written by a different author.  Right from the beginning, it seemed the authors were trying to set up impossible situations for the following author to work through, forcing the story to get stranger and more disconnected with each succeeding chapter.  Lemony Snicket, in one of his chapters writes, “It’s as if your lives are being written, not by a single, beneficent author, but by a whole team of authors pushing the story every which way, the way an Exquisite Corpse is built from whatever scraps are found.”  Unfortunately, while this method of writing make a fun parlor game or language arts activity, it produces a story that is difficult to follow and not very fun to read. I found it silly, incoherent and disappointing.   MS  - OPTIONAL.  Lisa, Reading Teacher