dialog is a great tool for what you are trying to achieve. Here's the example of a simple 3-choices menu:
dialog --menu "Choose one:" 10 30 3 \
1 Red \
2 Green \
3 Blue
The syntax is the following:
dialog --menu <text> <height> <width> <menu-height> [<tag><item>]
The selection will be sent to stderr. If you want to test it using a file:
dialog --menu "Choose one:" 10 30 3 1 Red 2 Green 3 Blue 2>/tmp/result.txt
And just have a look at /tmp/result.txt.