Book 1 Project: 13 Reasons Why Board Game

Book 1 Project: 13 Reasons Why Board Game

By: Lauren Van Kleunen

For a limited time only, the author Jay Asher of 13 Reasons Why is selling board games about the book. The board games will go on sale April 13^th at midnight for only a couple of weeks.  The game board only costs $21.99 (with tax), so it’s not expensive at all. For how popular the book is you better get it the day it comes out because people are predicting that 13 Reasons Why board games will sell out in the first hour or two. I am only warning you on how crazy this one stop shop will be, so we are not accountable for any of the injuries sustained that night. Now don’t you want to know what is in the board game?? Well I am glad you asked, the board game contains all of the places Clay visited throughout the book. You have game pieces with the characters faces on them, from pictures of Clay and Hannah to Mr. Porter and Skye. The objective of the game is to get to the end of the board game or in this case the school, where Clay finally ends up at. You will have 3 dice that you have to roll and move that many spaces, once you add them up. The only catch is if your dice ever add up to be 13 then you have to start the game all over again. Along with the game we are giving away Hannah’s diary of everything she wrote in there, so you can get the real life experience firsthand.

Throughout the book Clay, who is the main character is visiting a lot of different places/settings, based on the places Hannah is talking about. Some examples of the places he went to were “The Crestmont Movie Theater,” “Rosie’s Diner,” “Eisenhower Park,” “Monet’s Café,” and “Blue Spot Liquor.” In the book Clay goes into The Crestmont Movie Theater and here is what he says about it, “But first, the theater where Hannah and I worked for one summer. A place where she was safe: the Crestmont.” This quote goes well with the board game because Clay has so many memories there with Hannah, and it’s a big piece that would be missing from the board game if it wasn’t in there.  As Clay was traveling to each specific place, he would be visiting those places where that certain event happened, based on the tapes he was listening too, right then and there. For example Clay talks about the Blue Spot Liquor in this quote, “On this block, only two stores remain open: Blue Spot Liquor and Restless Video across the street. Blue spot looks just as grimy as the last time I walked by it. Even the cigarette and alcohol ads look the same. Like wallpaper on the front window.” I chose this quote because during this scene Clay is visiting one of the places where Hannah use to always go. I think he does that because he wants to bring Hannah back to life and by doing that he visited all the places where she once was before she died. One of the last places Clay visits before he finishes the tapes is Rosie’s Diner. He walked into the diner while listening to Hannah. This is what Clay says about the diner, “Warm air rushes out, smelling like a mixture of hamburger grease and sugar. Inside three of the five booths along the wall are taken. Thankfully, the booth farthest back is occupied. It’s not a question I need to consider, whether to sit there or not.” Clay says that statement because the seat that is occupied is where Hannah sat the day she went there and he doesn’t want to force himself to go over there while listening to the taps because he will feel weird about it. All these places that I have just stated all have a connection to them that’s why all of them are in the board game, and that’s why I decided to talk about them because I thought they were important to Clay.

The idea of making a board game for 13 Reasons Why fits perfectly with the book because the board game brings the characters and situations to life. I mean that the board game gives you a life perspective of what Clay and the others are going through. I think this idea will broaden the audience because once people see how fun the game is, they will want to then find out more about each of these places, so I think you will get a lot more people starting to read 13 Reasons Why. When reading this book a lot of people would agree that it was a book where you couldn’t set it down. With that being said, a lot of people won’t want to stop reading Jay Asher’s books based on this one and how good it is. Readers will want to read other books by Jay Asher, because in this book he showed how good of a writer he is. When an author creates a New York Times best seller, chances are people are not only going to read the best seller but also other books by that very same author.