He writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Like Ali’s warrior kids and pirate duchesses, his literary career defies easy categories. They understand the world they live in, and they’re not afraid to take action.” But that doesn’t happen because they are stupid or underdeveloped. “Instead of doing a learning story, I wanted to do a story where the young people were fully capable, fully realized characters,” said Ali, who was inspired by such young activists as Greta Thunberg and the Parkland mass-shooting survivors. You underestimate these non-traditional champions at your own peril, which was also part of Ali’s plan to elevate characters and readers alike. The stealth weapon is Krishi’s best male pal, Saeed, who is small in stature but mighty in spirit.Īnd one of the most intriguing adult characters is Dalilah, a duchess in her late 60s who is the captain of pirate ship and probably the savviest navigator in all of Elaria. The best fighter in the class is a girl, Krishi’s friend Zara. In the Citadel, all of the Whisperer students wear their hair long and dress in plain linen tunics and pants. “I was thinking the character should be genderless so that whoever the reader is, whether they feel like they are non-binary or they don’t have a relationship with gender, they can plug themselves in.”Īnd Ali’s adventures in archetype-bending did not stop there. “I wanted to this book to have adventure and some comedic elements, and I wanted it to have non-traditional characters,” Ali said of ‘Citadel,’ which is the first book in this “Choose Your Own Adventure” trilogy. Krishi is whoever the reader wants Krishi to be. Nothing in Ali’s book - not the illustrations, the language or even the character’s hair or clothing - puts Krishi in any specific gender box. And for the first time in “Choose Your Own Adventure” history, readers can choose Krishi’s gender based on how they identify. One of those students is Krishi, the talented teen Whisperer who is the “you” the book’s readers get to be. When Ali joined the “Choose Your Own Adventure” team, he chose to put his own spin on the beloved format.Īli’s “The Citadel of Whispers” is set in the fantasy world of Elaria, a vast, mountainous land whose collection of small city-states co-exist with the help of the Whisperers, a mysterious order of spies, diplomats and scholars who keep the Elaria power-balance in harmony.īut when the book begins, one ambitious emperor threatens to disrupt Elaria’s delicate balance, and a small band of student Whisperers from the prestigious Citadel must fight to restore order. It was revived in 2006 by the Chooseco independent publishing company. The series sold more than 250 million copiesworldwide before being discontinued in 1999. And if you didn’t like how your story was unfolding, you could go back and send your literary self down a brand new path. The books were written in the second person, and the narrative could change depending on decisions the reader made at various points in the story. Based on the interactive format of role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, “Choose Your Own Adventure” launched in 1979 with a series of books that let the reader step into the shoes of the story’s narrator.
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