Choose your own adventure series#

Choose your own adventure series#

After some discussion, Montgomery was able to make a contract for the series with Bantam Books. The series was later marketed to Pocket Books, where it also sold well, but Montgomery believed that it would sell better if a bigger publisher could be found. In 1975, he was able to convince Ray Montgomery, co-owner of Vermont Crossroads Press, to publish the book and it sold 8,000 copies, a large amount for a small local publishing house. He set out in 1970 to find a publisher but was rejected by nine publishing companies, causing him to shelve the idea. Packard soon developed this basic premise into a manuscript titled The Adventures of You on Sugar Cane Island. And I thought: 'Could I write this down?''

'What really struck me was the natural enthusiasm they had for the idea. But that night I was running out of things for Pete to do, so I just asked what they would do.' His two daughters came up with different paths for the story to take and Packard thought up an ending for each of the paths. Packard stated, 'I had a character named Pete and I usually had him encountering all these different adventures on an isolated island. History Īccording to Packard, the core idea for the series emerged from bedtime stories that he told to his daughters, revolving around a character named Pete and his adventures. Examples include the 'paradise planet' ending in Inside UFO 54-40, which can only be reached by cheating or turning to the wrong page by accident.

Īs the series progressed, both Packard and Montgomery experimented with the gamebook format, sometimes introducing unexpected twists such as endless page loops or trick endings. This allows for a realistic sense of unpredictability, and leads to the possibility of repeat readings, which is one of the distinguishing features of the books. Likewise, there is no clear pattern among the various titles regarding the number of pages per ending, the ratio of good to bad endings, or the reader's progression backwards and forwards through the pages of the book.

The number of endings varies from as many as 44 in the early titles to as few as 7 in later adventures. The stories are formatted so that, after a few pages of reading, the protagonist faces two or three options, each of which leads to further pages and further options, and so on until they arrive at one of the many story endings. In some stories, the protagonist is implied to be a child, whereas in other stories, they are an adult. Stories are generally gender- and race-neutral, though in some cases, particularly in illustrations, there is the presumption of a male reader (the target demographic group). Certain books in the series allow readers choice of who to take the role of, for example, in an adventure book, readers may be prompted to choose between a climber, a hiker, or a traveler. The protagonist-that is, the reader-takes on a role relevant to the adventure, such as a private investigator, mountain climber, race car driver, doctor, or spy. Originally created for 7- to 14-year-olds, the books are written in the second person. Netflix chose to settle the suit in November 2020. On January 11, 2019, Chooseco initiated a trademark infringement legal challenge against Netflix for the film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. In June 2018, Z-Man Games issued a licensed co-operative board game called Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger inspired by R. Chooseco does not reissue titles by Packard, who has started his own imprint, U-Ventures. When Bantam, now owned by Random House, allowed the Choose Your Own Adventure trademark to lapse, the series was relaunched by Chooseco, which now owns the trademark. Ĭhoose Your Own Adventure, as published by Bantam Books, was one of the most popular children's series during the 1980s and 1990s, selling more than 250 million copies between 19. Montgomery's Vermont Crossroads Press as the 'Adventures of You' series, starting with Packard's Sugarcane Island in 1976. The series was based upon a concept created by Edward Packard and originally published by Constance Cappel's and R. The Cave of Time by Edward Packard, the first book in the seriesĬhoose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's gamebooks where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions and the plot's outcome.