Blog Tour: Can You Survive: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Ryan Jacobson - Teenage Garage Sale & Giveaway

Ryan Jacobson is here today with a Teenage Garage Sale post courtesy of the Teen Book Scene blog tour for his brand new release, Can You Survive: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Thank you for being here today, Ryan! You can follow along with the tour here. Enjoy! 

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Welcome to my teenaged garage sale. I’m something of a pack rat, so I could probably really have this sale. (Hmm, maybe next summer.) I’ll try not to embarrass myself too much, but here are some of the must-have items you’ll find:

1. Transformers & G.I. Joe toys. I confess: I played with toys WAY too long. When my friends started going to movies and hanging out at the local pizza place/arcade, I stayed home with my Transformers and G.I. Joes.

2. Comic books. I will always love comic books. Back then, my favorites were Batman, Daredevil and Iron Man. I’m kind of over Daredevil and Iron Man, but my collection of Batman comics is still going strong.

3. Football cards. I was obsessed with football in general and collecting football cards in particular. I mixed in a little baseball and basketball here and there, but I was all about football.

4. Minnesota Vikings paraphernalia. If football was my game, the Vikings were my team. My entire bedroom was decked out in Vikings posters, magazines, autographed cards, calendars, toys and more.

5. Sports Illustrated. I had a subscription for most of my teenaged years and never threw a single issue away.

6. Tasmanian Devil T-shirts. My high school wardrobe consisted almost exclusively of jeans and Tasmanian Devil T-shirts. No kidding, I think I wore a Taz shirt almost every day. In completely unrelated news, I never had much luck with the ladies.

7. Track & Field ribbons. By seventh grade, my body was the size of a full-grown adult. I was the star athlete of my middle school. Too bad everyone else had to go and catch up with me by high school.

8. Bon Jovi cassettes. Come on, what child of the ’80s didn’t have Bon Jovi on tape?

9. Ninja costume. Yes, I was in a ninja club. Yes, it ended with a ride in a police car. No, I won’t say any more about that.

10. Miami Vice coat. I had this obnoxiously yellow coat that looked like something Sonny Crockett would wear. I felt so awesome in it, but it was a hand-me-down from my older brother. So I think I was probably three years too late for that look.

11. Alto saxophone. I was in band, and as much as I pretended to hate it, I actually quite 

liked it.

12. Notebooks. I still have most of my old notebooks. They’re pretty fun to look through once in a while, as they’re filled with doodles, cheesy poems and far too many love letters that were never delivered. [Sigh.]

Thank you for sharing items from your teenage years with us today, Ryan! Thank you for being here as well! 

Ryan Jacobson can be found on his website, on his blog, and on twitter. 

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He's the world's most famous detective, and thanks to this brilliantly adapted book, he's you! The cases, the clues, the suspects, they're yours to sort through in this exciting Choose Your Path book. You are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. You make the choices. But be careful; the wrong decision could lead to your doom.

Synopsis taken from goodreads.

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Giveaway Details

Ryan Jacobson has graciously provided Lost For Words with a copy of Can You Survive: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for giveaway.

Thank you, Ryan! 

Giveaway is open to US only. 

Giveaway will end December 14, 2011.

Please fill out this FORM to enter. Comments, while appreciated, won't be counted as entries. 

Thank you!

Can You Survive: Jack London's Call of the Wild - Ryan Jacobson - Blog Tour Review and a Spooky Story for you!

Stolen. Shipped. Enslaved.

Can You Survive?

You find yourself in Alaska, a dangerous world of greedy men and savage dogs. Every moment, your life is at risk. Do you have what it takes to survive as Buck, literature’s most famous sled dog? Or will the freezing temperatures and rugged wilderness lead to your doom? Step into this adventure, and choose your path. But choose wisely, or else…

Title: Can You Survive? Jack London's Call of the Wild

Author: Ryan Jacobson

Genre: Middle Grade Fiction, Choose Your Own Adventure, Adventure, Action

Publisher: Lake 7 Creative

Publication Date: October 15, 2011

Format: ARC

Source: Received from author. Many thanks goes to Ryan Jacobson for sending me a copy of this book for review. I received this book free of charge in exchange for an honest review.

Look for it: Amazon, Book Depository

My rating: 4/5

Mini-review:

Can You Survive: Jack London's Call of the Wild is an adaptation of the classic tale Call of the Wild. It has been adapted into a choose your own adventure book, where the reader becomes Buck. Choices abound for the reader as they follow along with Buck on his journey across the wilds of Alaska. 

The wilderness is a treacherous place, and death beckons to the unwary. Buck has to learn who to trust, and how to adapt to the harsh conditions he is forced into. He no longer lives in the lap of luxury and you will need to make the choices alongside him. If you make the wrong choice, that will be the end of the line for Buck. There are many different choices to make within the pages of this book, and many of them lead to Buck's demise. Will you, and he, be able to make the right decision in every situation? Only time will tell. 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading and re-living the classic tale of Call of the Wild in this format. I believe many middle grade readers and even teens will enjoy reading it as well, especially since they get to dictate what Buck does next. All in all, this is an adventurous adaptation that will have the reader living out Buck's story. 

Now for a Spooky Treat!

The Haunted Hutch

“Surprise!” exclaimed Lila Palmer.

Her daughter Jenny stifled a gasp. It was indeed a surprise—but not a good one. Jenny’s parents had unexpectedly arrived at her home, and while they were always welcome to visit, the gift they had brought was not a happy sight.

The china hutch was a gorgeous piece of furniture, but its worth was measured only in sentimental value. The antique had been passed down from mother to daughter for generations. Apparently, now it was Jenny’s turn to own it.

As a child, Jenny had never given much thought to the hutch. She would have ignored it all together if not for the times she had gotten into trouble on its behalf. The items displayed behind the hutch’s glass doors had a strange habit of rearranging themselves, and the hutch doors often popped open without explanation.

For years, Jenny shouldered the blame, even though she was innocent. Fortunately for her, when she was eight years old, her mother witnessed a door opening on its own; a statuette jumped off its shelf and onto the floor. After that, Jenny wasn’t blamed anymore.

Before the girl’s ninth birthday, the Palmers hit a stretch of bad luck. The family’s house was burglarized, and the thieves took several hunting rifles and a jewelry collection that included Lila’s heirloom wedding rings.

Mere months later, an electrical fire destroyed the Palmer’s home, consuming most of their belongings. The only item to survive the blaze was the old hutch. Lila took special care in cleaning the soot off her prized possession, and while she did so, she made a startling discovery: The two stolen wedding rings had suddenly appeared on one of the hutch’s shelves.

Even after the Palmers moved the hutch into their new home, its contents continued to change positions, and the doors sometimes opened themselves. At first, these happenings were little more than fun conversation topics. However, as the years passed, Jenny detected a ghastly pattern: Every time the hutch doors opened, a loved one died within three months!

Jenny hated herself for discovering the correlation. She spent most of her teen years in fear of finding the hutch open, and when this harbinger came, she waited in dreadful anticipation for death to find someone she cared about. It always did, without exception.

By contrast, in the years after she left the hutch behind, Jenny didn’t attend a single funeral. It would seem that in escaping the antique cabinet, she had saved her family and friends from the Grim Reaper.

Yet here it was. Death—the hutch—had found her again. Jenny silently debated her options. Although it would break her mother’s heart, she eventually chose to refuse the gift.

She didn’t have to.

As the hutch was lifted off the truck, the glass on its doors broke. Jenny tried not to smile; now she had an excuse for keeping it in the garage.

Three years came and went, and the hutch sat in storage. Time softened Jenny’s opinion of the family treasure. Eventually her sentiments got the better of her. (The hutch’s predictions of death couldn’t be real. They were simply matters of coincidence.) She fixed the hutch and moved it into her dining room.

For the better part of a month, Jenny enjoyed the old piece of furniture without incident. Then one day it happened. Jenny came home from grocery shopping to find the hutch’s doors standing open.

Exactly three months later, her 36-year-old cousin died from a heart attack. Jenny wasted no time in getting rid of the hutch, once and for all.

© Ryan Jacobson

Ryan Jacobson can be found on his website, on facebook, and on twitter.

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Ryan Jacobson has always loved choose your path books, so he is thrilled to get a chance to write them. He used his memories of those fun-filled stories and his past experiences to write LOST IN THE WILD. The book became so popular that he followed it with STORM AT THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT EVEREST and CAN YOU SURVIVE: JACK LONDON’S CALL OF THE WILD.

Ryan is the author of nearly 20 books, including picture books, comic books, graphic novels, chapter books and ghost stories. He lives in Mora, Minnesota, with his wife Lora, sons Jonah and Lucas, and dog Boo. For more details, visit www.RyanJacobsonOnline.com.