Choose Your Own Adventure: Spies

Ellen Book is a Branch Manager with the Miami-Dade Public Library System at the Pinecrest Branch. Since 1987 when she began her career as a Business & Science Specialist, she promoted into Management at a wide range of locations. Along the way, her volunteer efforts included Dade County Library Association President and South Miami Rotary Club President. One of her favorite literacy projects was coordinating numerous countywide dictionary giveaways in which 27,000 dictionaries were hand-delivered at student assemblies. Her favorite things to do include saying yes to opportunities and connecting people with information that they need.

Katherine Factor is a freelance editor, book coach, and educator. She has her MFA in Poetry from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has held positions at Idyllwild Arts Academy and Interlochen Arts Academy. She is a recipient of grants from the Iowa Arts Council, and the Arts Enterprise Laboratory for supporting projects publishing young writers. She is the author of both Choose Your Own Adventure: Mata Hari and Choose Your Own Adventure: Harry Houdini.

Kyandreia Jones is a Posse Miami Scholar and a Creative Writing major at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. She was born and raised in South Florida. Her poetry and prose has been published in various college literary publications and magazines such as Red Weather, Grasping Roots , The Black List Journal and The Underground. Her debut novel was Choose Your Own Adventure Spies: James Armistead Lafayette.  In the Choose Your Own Adventure Spies series the reader is the protagonist and must choose what happens next in the story. For example: If you answer the question honestly and reveal your secret, turn to page 9. If you protect your mission and try to reason with Arena, turn to page 16. In: Mary Bowser (Chooseco), a tale inspired by a real figure in history, a courageous freed slave, Kyandreia Jones takes the reader to Virginia during the Civil War. You, the reader, are Mary Bowser, a spy. The year is 1864. You are lifelong friends of Elizabeth “Bet” Van Lew, a Quaker from a wealthy Richmond household who organized a ring of women to spy in plain sight to help the Union during the Civil War. You infiltrate the Confederate White House, posing as a servant, and gather information for the Union directly from the Confederacy’s most powerful leaders.