By R. L. Stine
Your child sneaks into a shut carnival with two friends, the man who owns it locks the gates behind them, and over twenty endings are waiting inside.
The carnival is closed. Your child goes in anyway, with Patty and Brad, over the fence and into the dark. Then the man who owns the place finds them, shuts the gates, and tells them they are going to test the rides for him before he opens it to the whole town. Your child gets separated from their friends no matter which way they choose, which is a mean trick and exactly right. From there the book keeps asking. The Doom Slide or the Supersonic Space Coaster. The swamp called Booger Bog or the sideshow tent with the Snake Lady in it. Over twenty endings sit under those choices and only two of them are any good. Everything else goes wrong in an inventive way.
This is the same machine as the old Choose Your Own Adventure books with something a child actually wants painted on top. The choose-and-flip structure gives your child control, which is what gets a reluctant one to open a book at all. The horror gives them a reason to want to. Stine's writing is doing the opposite job to Packard's flatness, so this is the pick when your child likes the choosing but complains the old ones are boring. It moves, it is funny in a ghoulish way, and the wrong turns are dreamed up to be enjoyed rather than survived. A child who reads nothing will read this to find out what is in Booger Bog.