10/12/2026
Eleven years ago, my brother-in-law in Mexico passed away at the age of 25, leaving behind 2 young children. A few years later, I wrote this Choose-Your-Own-Ending story in his memory. The two children in the story are my niece and nephew. In this story, Mexican kids Dante and Eleonor are on a quest to buy three things for their papá’s altar. There are 8 possible endings, but only ONE happy ending! Students won’t know whether their choices will lead to a funny mishap, misfortune, or the one happy ending until they keep reading. (And they ask to re-read the story over and over until they can find the happy ending!! Great for loading them up with lots of comprehensible input!)
When I read through my Choose-Your-Own-Ending stories with my classes, I always do it as a whole-class reading, projecting the story on the board. Depending on the class proficiency, I sometimes will do just a little bit of circling, PQA, or choral translation of the text, but never spending too long on any given slide. You want to keep the excitement for the storyline going!
When we get to a choice in the story, I like to use popsicle sticks with the students’ names written on them to randomly select who will make a choice. This also helps ensure that all students eventually get to make a choice. You better believe that the other kids have opinions though, and start calling out to that student what choice they think should be picked. It makes for a fun dynamic! There are other times when I have the entire class vote instead. Both work, and sometimes it’s just good to mix things up a bit.
This story is a fun way to introduce cultural references while giving students lots of repetitions of ve, va, corre, compra and other useful vocabulary.
Designed for Novice High to Intermediate Mid students, but Novice Low-Mid can follow along too with enough guidance. The story is narrated in the present tense, with any other tenses defined right on the page when they appear.
These Choose-Your-Own-Ending stories have been a student favorite, and they always ask me to write more!
Comment STORY and I’ll DM you the link! 🌺💀🌼