In Continuum.

That's my copy of The Haunted Tower no one is going to take away from me! At this day and age, books like that are already considered somewhat of a relic, and I don't intend to dispose of it until it upgrades to some kind of national treasure. You see, everybody was crazy about puzzle adventure books like that, and all the children in my school wanted to have one. Everybody wanted to be involved in the story somehow, and it was fun going through all the puzzles and the mazes just to get to the bottom of a certain mystery as depicted in every book. I loved the series as a child, and I'd bug my mother to take me to this book rental store in the neighborhood just to rent a couple of them each time. I haven't read every book in the series, but I have definitely read more than half of them. Everything from Murder on the Midnight Plane, to The Incredible Dinosaur Expedition, to Agent Arthur's Jungle Journey, to The Emerald Conspiracy - I've read them. Even the advanced level puzzle books, like Codename Quicksilver and Cobra Consignment. I've read them all and solved them all with, well, a bit of help from the answer key. But still, those books were great fun, and that kind of innocent childish fun isn't around anymore. 

There are a lot of things that they don't make anymore, and one of them are books like that. You know, books that require the reader to think before they move on with the story. There isn't anything wrong with traditional novels, with page after page of books. But books like that can really get children to think by getting them involved in the puzzles and the mystery solving, all that stuff. Especially when these books have all the required ingredients to make a non-book lover, a lover of books. We have murder, mystery, ghosts, haunting, little boys and girls saving a town or accomplishing a mission, what more do you want? This is a great series, and they don't make books like that for children any longer, or at least I don't know too much about it. Back in my days, books were so popular amongst the classmates that I became the library of sorts, and I had to lend people books every now and then, just because we were so obsessed with these stories. Usborne Puzzle Adventures, to me, was an unique way to get myself involved in the story, and my mother was supportive of me all the way, as long as it has got to do with reading something. I liked to be a part of the mystery solving team, to immerse myself in the adventures and then saving the world from evil. It felt awesome, in the childish sort of way. 

I remember buying this book from the school book fair. You remember how it was, when they'd come down to our schools to sell books, and then they put this big red chop on the first page which said "PAID", just to make sure that you paid for the books. I bought a bunch of Bookworm Club books there, and a couple of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews. The Haunted Island was picked up by me really because of the title. Now, to be honest, I was fascinated with anything that had to do with ghosts, monsters, and dinosaurs when I was younger. If the cover of the book had any of those, I'd be jumping for it like vultures on rotten meat. I'd buy anything that had ghost stories in them, or at least supposedly true ghost stories. Russell Lee is this ridiculous local writer that puts a bag on his face whenever he appears in the public, but I didn't see it as some marketing gimmick back then. It was cool, because all his books were just downright creepy, and creepy meant good amongst the children. And this book is called The Haunted Tower, and the word "haunted" bought me over without any hesitations on my part. Seriously, that was pretty much how I bought books back then - based upon three repetitive themes that worked on me, every single time. And no, I was never a fan of Archie. 

Somehow, the topic of the Usborne series came up between Neptina and I the other day, and I am glad that she knows what I was talking about when I tried to describe the format of the book to her. She was a big fan of the books as well, and remains a big fan of the books even now. We have vowed to find the books in Kinokuniya or Borders and then buy them just for old times' sake. Seriously, these books are just so fun that even adults can enjoy. I know I did today, when I went through this book with her, and it was just great fun picking our way through the maze at the beginning, and then try to figure out which way to turn the gears and where the secret door is hidden. As much as I love my graphic novels, stuff like that really brings a smile onto my face. Because everything about my childhood has been embedded in books like that, and I grew up with these book, one in my hand every day of the week. Admittedly, I wasn't exactly patient with the story, and I'd jump right to the bolded words at the end of each page that signified a puzzle waiting to be solved. But it was good clean fun, and I had a lot of great time reading as I went along. 

We were just talking about how awesome the book The Intergalactic Bus Trip was when she said something that hit it home for me. She mentioned, passionately I might add, about how children these days are obsessed more with video games - what's up with that? You know, you get onto a bus or a train, and you see a row of children tapping away on the buttons on their handheld consoles, staring intently at the screen even as their parents are half dragging them out of the doors. Suddenly, all the entertainment in the children's lives are reduced to an up-down-left-right button, and a couple of other buttons for options, selections and such. You know, the shapes with PSP and stuff. We don't read enough anymore, because "reading is boring", as so many of the people I know would say to you. Reading is boring, and writing is even more boring, and it's tiring. So when you don't read enough, you don't write well, and everything translates to our speeches and our writings. That is why a lot of younger people these days can't even pronounce words more than three syllables long. But they know all the cartoon and anime characters, and they certainly know everything about Pokemon. 

I wonder when our young generation started to decline, you know, I wonder when they decided to abandon the books and go for the video games. I think it was when television took over, when the likes of Teletubbies took over and polluted the minds of young ones. Not all children who watched Teletubbies turned out that way, of course, but the obsession with television probably started young. You know, it cultivated a certain need to want to have moving pictures, instead of those inanimate ones in books. So they turned to television, and later on to video games because you have much more control. Oh yes, instead of the remote control that merely controlled the volume and the channels, now we can make our pixelated characters shoot bullets and fire balls! It was an awesome time, and the lover of books graduated retreated into the background, because they - we - were labeled with names like "bookworms" or "nerds", while the video game lovers had names like, well, "video gamers". They had the cool name, while the rest of us became more and more uncool, and less and less relevant. Therefore, books like The Haunted Tower suddenly became obsolete, and it it disappeared off the shelves of Popular bookstore. No prizes on guessing why though: because it isn't "popular" anymore.

Video games killed children's books, I swear. I want my children's books back, you know, I want the children in the next generation to start loving books again. Not just the Harry Potter type of fantasy novels, but books like that which really requires you to think, and think harder. That was what my mother always bought for my sister and I when we were young, books that required us to solve puzzles and to answer questions. She is an avid fan of books, and she believes in the necessity of exposing children to books at a young age. So we had a lot of books when we were young, and I was particularly into them from a young age. There isn't anything wrong with wanting to shoot aliens in a television set, or to collect monsters in a ball on handheld consoles. It's just kind of sad that a lot of children these days are more consumed by television and video games than anything else. You know, what happened to the good old fun that used to happen in between classes and during recess? I'm not even sure what happens in an ordinary primary school anymore. Do they still have hopscotches and catching? Do they even know what I am talking about? 

Primary school, it was all about hopscotch and catching. There was the occasional soccer and basketball, but hopscotch was just really fun. Then there was that tennis ball throwing game, the covered walkway game, the erasers, the marbles, and all those things that we did in primary school that didn't require batteries. All we needed were our legs, our hands, and our minds to play those games, and they were good games. Games that encouraged team building, leadership, sportsmanship, and all those ships. Video games really put a child into a corner, you know, it isolates him from the rest of the world. Unless it is an online game, then perhaps you have something to argue about. Handheld games are still pretty restricted to just the size of the monitor, and you are playing the game by yourself in a small corner most of the time. Then you turn off the game, you get back to work, and you really aren't that heroic character you were just playing a while ago now, were you? At least you take something away from puzzle adventure books. Not so much from video games though, not really. 

So, my kids are going to read the whole Usborne Puzzle Adventure series when they are old enough to read. As much as I won't like to control my children too much, I think the television and the games of the future are going to be too perverse and twisted for an average child to handle. I love my shooting games, don't get me wrong, but leave some time for the books yeah? Don't let your child be consumed by the video games, don't let it replace everything else in their lives. Because really, all those glory and all those excitement ends with the pressing of a button. You really can't bring those items and treasures out from the game, it doesn't work that way. It just doesn't.