The Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) series’ history is one built on a mythos that was used by Bantam Books to help sell the series. At the centre of that mythos sits primarily one person, Edward Packard author of the first book in the series, The Cave of Time (1979). The biography for Packard for this book (and most of his books) in the series reads:
“Mr Packard conceived of the idea for Choose Your Own Adventure series in the course of telling bedtime stories to his children, Caroline, Andrea and Wells.” (1979, unnumbered) Packard himself described this experience as:
“I started making up a story about a boy named Pete who was cast up on a strange island and couldn’t think of what would happen next in the story, so I asked the kids what they would do if they were Pete and got two different answers, and that’s what gave me the idea of continuing the story on two tracks, then branching out and leading to multiple endings.” (Edward Packard Interview, April 2014)
His daughter Andrea Packard, herself the author of two books in the series, described the experience as this:
“He told us bedtime stories and we were actually 3 kids, Caroline who's my older sister, she's 3 and half years older and then there's me and I was born in '63, and I have a younger brother who’s is 2 and half years younger, Wells. And so Wells being the youngest participated in these stories but was not always as vocal as we were by virtue of being younger. And my sister and I sometimes competed for his attention and wanted the story to go this way or that. I believe he tells this story that he reached a point of exhaustion where he wasn't sure what to add next in a conventional story and so he asked us what we thought might happen next. I don't remember that particular moment, what I remember are the stories and his engagement with us, fostering my own wish to think of stories.” (Andrea Packard Interview, June 2014)
The book that arose from the stories that Packard told was not The Cave of Time (1979). Although The Cave of Time is first book in the Bantam Series, it is not the first book developed by Packard using this formula. This original book was called Sugarcane Island (1976) (Katz, Gamebooks.org, Sugarcane Island entry) and was written in 1969 but was not picked up by a large publishing house. In fact it was first published by Vermont Crossroads Press a small independent publishing house run
by Raymond Almiran Montgomery Jr. (who would eventually author CYOA books as R.A.
Montgomery) and Constance Cappel. Although Sugarcane Island would be the first book that could be called a CYOA, it had a complicated publication history being first published with Vermont Crossroads, then Lippincott in 1978 and then finally as part of the series that it helped to spawn in 1986 as book 62 of the Bantam series.
Raymond (Ray) Montgomery was first person to see the value in what Packard had created and he knew that the books would be a series. Montgomery was responsible for taking the book series which he had called ‘The Adventures of You’ to Bantam Books once the initial set of books exceeded Montgomery’s ability to publish them. Shannon Gilligan, current publisher of Chooseco and
Montgomery’s wife describes the process by which Montgomery came to see the value that interaction had when creating a storytelling experience:
“He was a big promoter of the empowerment affect. Get people to think, kids especially, to think with power. And that has its roots, and he has lot of interesting stories, and he did a lot of games design in the late sixties and early seventies. Where he would design games for training for the Peace Corp and other government groups... So he really carried forward his knowledge, his firsthand knowledge of designing those games and how to empower somebody. And you know you give them character and occupation identifiers and you say this is YOU. Often it was done with a very light touch and it wasn’t meant to be truly pedagogic or heavy handed but there it would be just enough to give that person, to as you say prime them to take the role and run with it. And I think the most successful Choose Your Own Adventures do that. They really ask you to look through a different pair of eyes. That are clearly not your own.” (Shannon Gilligan Interview, May 2014)
When the books were picked up by Bantam Books both Packard and Montgomery were responsible for delivering a requisite number of books to Bantam a year. Initially it was six books each, so that a new book in the series could be published monthly. Both men would then subcontract out these books out to authors they felt were appropriate and they each owned the copyright for their
respective books (Edward Packard Interview, April 2014). Each book was identified by a colophon on the title page indicating that it was ‘An Edward Packard Book’ or ‘An R.A. Montgomery Book’. When the series took off in 1979, twelve books a year were published (one a month), a pace that kept up unabated until the series began to decline in 1992 (Shannon Gilligan Interview, May 2014). Edward Packard described it in this way:
“I invented the concept and wrote the first books. Montgomery ran the small press that published my first book. Bantam awarded contracts providing that each on us would write or hire writers so as to supply equal numbers of books each year...I could not personally write all the books needed under my contract so I hired other authors. I supervised and pre-edited books written by my subcontractors. Same was true for Ray Montgomery.” (Edward Packard Interview, April 2014)
This high output explains how the series was able to produce such a high number of books over the course of its original publication. The series is notable for producing numerous spin-offs using the same basic formula for different demographics including Choose Your Own Adventure for Younger Readers, also known as Skylarks, (1981-1992, 52 books), Your First Adventure (1984-1987, 12 books), Choose Your Own Adventure Walt Disney (1985-1987, 12 books), Choose Your Own Adventure Super Adventure (1987, 2 books) and Choose Your Own Nightmare (1995-1997, 18 books). There were also two spin-off series known as Space Hawks (1991-1992, 6 books) and Passport (1992, 6 books) and two further licensed books series Choose Your Own Adventure – The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
(1992-1993, 8 books) and Choose Your Own Star Wars Adventure (1998, 3 books). Although many of the authors interviewed here authored books across a number of the different spin-offs, the focus in this section is mostly on the main series published from 1979-1998.
The series is somewhat unique as a chapter book series because each author is credited with their real name. Typically in a chapter book series a house name is used such as Franklin M. Dixon (The Hardy Boys) and Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew), or is an author who developed the idea for a series whose name then became the house name such as Francine Pascal (Sweet Valley High) and Ann M. Martin (The Babysitter’s Club). Early on in the series’ development Montgomery decided that all of the authors would be properly credited, and the series is responsible for giving many authors their first opportunity to be published.
The decline and demise of the series seems to be the product of a number of factors, one of which must surely have been the number of spin-offs that the publisher was trying to maintain. However the most prevalent reason according to Shannon Gilligan, is that the fact that by the time that series finished at Bantam in 1998, the company had been through three mergers and that there was no one who was consciously steering the direction of the series. With each merger the children’s book department responsible for the series was made smaller until the series was no longer considered a priority for the company who now owned it (Random House). As a result very little focus was put into continuing to develop the series and a disastrous decision was made to change the size of the books from rack size (designed to fit on a rotating book rack) to digest size, a size associated with young readers who were not typically the demographic associated with the series, which lead to significant fall in sales and resulted in the end of the series at Bantam in 1998 (Shannon Gilligan Interview, May 2014). When Bantam’s copyright lapsed on the series in 2005, Montgomery and Gilligan purchased the copyright and republished some of the books in the series (only those whose copyright was owned by Montgomery).