1001 Silly Would You Rather Questions to Spark Family Fun

I’m a substitute teacher and I was in a tenth-grade class the other day. They had finished the ‘work’  they had to do online and I was attempting to pry additional work out of their surly teen souls. I did get confirmation of needed assignments from one student, but they had already waved the white flag of surrender. It was just an essay on something, they wouldn’t tell me what it was on, but it was a paragraph of original thought that had stressed this student to the point of Tik Tok-removal despair. This brings me to The Ultimate Book of Would You Rather Questions: 1001 Family-Friendly Challenges for Kids, Teens and Adults.

The Ultimate Book of Would You Rather Questions is not exclusively for high school students. Ideally, this book is meant to create conversations, laughter, and bonding for those six years and older. It’s the world of would-you-rather, a fabulous land where the sillier and more outrageous the question the cooler you are. In this land, imagination is the key currency, and thinking about the wacky things you’ve never thought about is the $100 dollar bill.

This book is family-friendly. It is not the fringe adult content that my high school creative-challenged crowd was wrestling with in class. The Ultimate Book of Would You Rather Questions is broken up into over a dozen categories like seasonal, hobbies, food, school, eww and more. Would you rather have green tears or purple snot is just one of the eww gems that fourth-grade pranksters will try to one-up their class clown competitors with on the playground. Purple snot is the obvious answer because you blow your nose, thus people should rarely see said purple mucus. Unless you pick your nose, which many boys in that age group do, which is disgusting and would lead to more people seeing the purple slimy gunk that your body produces 1.5 liters of a day.

This is the kind of fun, semi-circular logic questions that delight middle elementary ages through seventh grade. It’s fun to think about who would win in a battle between Thor and The Flash, that’s not one of the questions in the book, but the answer is Thor. The soft conversation skills that the would-you-rather questions can stimulate will bear fruit long past those key years. Is dinner time conversation stilted, fake and replete with a surly look from your teen who’s looking at you like you’re trying to trick them into using skibity toilet incorrectly?

Embrace the silly. Hug the cactus. Eat the frog and admit that you can use a left-field book of questions that, at the bare minimum will make your teens look at you with slightly less disdain. It’ll provide just a bit of levity and a distraction from getting on their case about sub-par grades, slouchy posture or questionable friends. This is fun, silly conversation that demands to be asked of one another in a friendly atmosphere. As a question is read to someone the others in the area might know how they’ll respond, beat them to the punch or provide stories about the one time that they……

The Ultimate Book of Would You Rather: 1001 Family-Friendly Challenges for Kids, Teens and Adults is something that will really serve a purpose for a limited amount of time. It’s about one or two questions, twice around the circle or whatever way you want to engage with the book.  This won’t be one of their favorite books, but it’s a go-to, foolproof way to chat with somebody who otherwise doesn’t want to speak now. The book does that in a light, silly way that wears down their surliness with a silly question and builds relationships in the process. It also just might build those free-range, creative skills needed to make essays that could twist your mind when you’re in high school just a bit easier.

The Ultimate Book of Would You Rather Questions: 1001 Family-Friendly Challenges for Kids, Teens and Adults is by Kimberly McLeod and is available on Page Street Publishing.

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