Books Archives : The Retro Network

Choose Your Own Adventure Were the Books That Let Us Kids Control the Story

Choose Your Own Adventure turned reading into exploration, letting kids shape wild stories filled with time travel, deep sea quests, haunted mansions, and unforgettable choices.

Back to Basics: Why Retro Storytelling Styles Are the Perfect Way to Teach Teens Big Ideas Today

BJ Newman

In a world saturated with fast-paced content, endless scrolling, and bite-sized entertainment, capturing a teen’s attention—let alone teaching them meaningful ideas—can feel like an uphill battle. Ironically, the solution may not lie in newer, flashier

The Whyte Python World Tour Review

Pitfall Gary

⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Whyte Python World Tour By Travis Kennedy (2025) When I first heard about The Whyte Python World Tour by Travis Kennedy I knew I had to read the book. It’s right in my

Old School Evil: Our Darkest Hour is Live!

Brian Cave

Old School Evil: Our Darkest Hour is finally here, completing my series of urban fantasy novels. Inspired by the villains of 80s cartoons like Megatron, Skeletor, and Cobra Commander, Old School Evil features a world

The Legacy of Goosebumps: How R.L. Stine’s Scary Stories Became a Generation’s Gateway to Horror

Mickey Yarber

In the early 1990s, Scholastic took a gamble on a series of spooky chapter books aimed at middle-grade readers. What followed was a publishing phenomenon that would haunt bookstores, school libraries, and Scholastic Book Fairs

Choose Your Own Adventure Is Bringing Back the Magic With the Retro Box

Walter King

For anyone who grew up flipping pages and making split-second decisions that could lead to treasure, time travel, or total disaster, Choose Your Own Adventure books were more than stories, they were experiences. Now, thanks

Time Capsule: 1981 TSR Gateway To Adventure Catalog

The Retro Network

Go back to the golden age of role-playing and table-top gaming and browse through this TSR catalog from the early ’80s!

The Last Action Heroes: A Journey into the Golden Age of Action Movies

Pitfall Gary

In a world where action movies rule supreme, there is one decade that stands above the rest, the 1980s! Recently I discovered the book, The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops and Feuds of Hollywood’s

Writing Books In The ’90s And Now: What Has Changed?

The Retro Network

Ah, the ’90s. The era of frosted tips, grunge music, and the art of writing books. Writers in the ’90s had to lug around massive PCs that weighed more than a truckload of encyclopedias. Once

Summer Reading Program, Day 1: A Boy, A Mouse and Your Own Adventure

Eric Vardeman

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a series of books from my childhood on the Retro Network VIP Slack channel and asked if anyone had heard of the series. Somewhat surprisingly, nobody had heard of

Summer Reading Program: A season full of books

Karen Flieger

When Eric announced his idea for this series, I was very excited. Books have always been a big part of my life. My mom always read and the library was a frequent errand for us.

Summer Reading Program, Day 2: A Lion, A Witch and Several Investigators

Eric Vardeman

The summer of 1982. I’m twelve and it’s the first summer that I’m really allowed to just ride my bike all over the place. My friends and I would usually take off mid-morning and explore

Summer Reading Program, Day 3: A Galaxy Far, Far Away…

Eric Vardeman

I’m a child of Star Wars. I saw the original trilogy in the theaters starting at age 7. I had all the action figures and a lot of the toys. I had shirts and pajamas

Summer Reading Program, Day 4: S.E. Hinton and The Life of A Dog…

Eric Vardeman

Ninth grade me had a huge crush on an tenth grader in my Biology class. She was blonde, cute and very flirty. So when I found out that she was a library aid during my

Summer Reading Program, Day 5: Death, Time, and Fate

Eric Vardeman

By the time I hit tenth grade, my penchant for reading had slowly been replaced with a new hobby: playing guitar. It’s all I did in my spare time and recreational reading fell by the

Weird Al Seriously Expanded Edition Book Review

Adam Pope

I have always been weird. Just a little…off. In trying to relate to others, it was clear that I always interpreted life through a different prism than my peers, finding humor in off-beat concepts and