Choose Your Own Adventure and More

66 covers out of 184 books!

Choose 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. The series was based upon a concept created by Edward Packard and originally published by Constance Cappel's and R. A. Montgomery's Vermont Crossroads Press as the "Adventures of You" series, starting with Packard's Sugarcane Island in 1976.

Choose 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 1979 and 1998. 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. Chooseco does not reissue titles by Packard, who has started his own imprint, U-Ventures. List of Books

Originally created for 7- to 14-year-olds, the books are written in the second person. 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. 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). In some stories, the protagonist is implied to be a child, whereas in other stories, they are an adult. The stories are formatted so that, after a couple of pages of reading, the protagonist faces two or three options, each of which leads to more options, and then to one of many endings. The number of endings is not set, and varies from as many as 44 in the early titles, to as few as 8 in later adventures. 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. 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. As the series progressed, both Packard and Montgomery experimented with the gamebook format, sometimes introducing unexpected twists such as endless page loops or trick endings. 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, and the potentially endless storyline in The Race Forever.

History: According 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. Packard stated, "I had a character named Pete and I usually had him encountering all these different adventures on an isolated island. 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. "What really struck me was the natural enthusiasm they had for the idea. And I thought: 'Could I write this down?'"

Packard soon developed this basic premise into a manuscript titled The Adventures of You on Sugar Cane Island. He set out in 1970 to find a publisher but was rejected by nine publishing companies, causing him to shelve the idea. 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. 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. After some discussion, Montgomery was able to make a contract for the series with Bantam Books. Packard and Montgomery were selected to write books for the series, including the contracting out of titles to additional authors. The famous phrase “Choose Your Own Adventure” was born when Ed Packard sold his second and third books. The second, Deadwood City, was a Western saga, and junior editor Dinah Stevenson was given the assignment to create a jacket line that would explain this unfamiliar narrative style to readers; Stevenson came up with “Choose your own adventure in the Wild West.” The phrase was adapted for the next title with the tag line, The Third Planet from Altair: Choose your own adventure in outer space. The series was highly successful after it began printing with Bantam Books. It prompted the creation of three other series by authors with Bantam Books that worked with the same format. Nineteen other series of the same format began being published by rival publishing houses. The large popularity of the concept led to the titling of a new genre of writing for the format, which was called gamebooks.

Choose Your Own Adventure: Marvel's Adventure Gamebook

Description: This series of gamebooks uses a system similar to that of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Gamebooks, which isn't surprising, since it's also a spin-off of a TSR role-playing game. In each volume, the reader controls one or more characters from Marvel comics. Each character comes with a set of pre-defined attributes which are combined with dice rolls and compared with target numbers in order to perform actions. Characters also have Health Points and Karma Points. The books were first published in the United States by TSR and then several were reprinted in a different order by Puffin in England.

Choose Your Own Adventure: DC's Which Way

via iFanboy: In 1983, Superman: The Man of Steel: A Super Powers Which Way Book was first published. Soon afterwards, books based on Supergirl, the Justice League, and Batman followed. As was the case with most books of this nature, the plots varied wildly depending on the choices the reader made. In the Superman book, the Man of Steel could stumble upon villainous plans put into motion by either Lex Luthor, Toyman, or the evil Kryptonians from Superman II. He could even fail in his mission if a wrong choice was made. The same was true about the other three books in the series. Supergirl could run into Mr. Mxyzptlk, Brainiac, travel through time, or find herself in the Land of Oz. The Justice League book was more straightforward with the League battling Darkseid and his minions no matter what choices you made. However, the wrong choice could lead to Darkseid blasting Batman to death in a moment which seemingly prophesied the end of Final Crisis. Each of the books was partially illustrated. The work was done by José Delbo, an artist whose clean lines made him one of DC’s go-to artists when licensed work was needed outside of comics. He spent years working on the Superman newspaper strip among his other duties.

Choose Your Own Adventure: DC's Choose Your Fate

via iFanboy: 2012 another stab was taken at these types of gamebooks. This time using the name Choose-Your-Fate Adventure Books, each one focused on a different superhero. So far, only two have been published. The Batman book came out in May of 2012 and the Wonder Woman book followed in October. Complete with illustrations done in the style of the later years of the Bruce Timm DC animated shows, these two books gave a slight twist on the choices past books had given. Now there were small puzzles and clues that readers had to solve in order to choose the path to take. For example, sometimes a maze would be presented to the reader and the first exit found was the one readers should take to get to the next part of the story. At other times, word puzzles were presented that needed to be solved in order to get an understanding of what to do next. This level of interactivity had been used in other gamebooks during the 1980s, but nothing like this had used the DC characters before. It was a nice twist on an old format. Sadly, no future books in this series have been announced that I can see. It appears that this series will disappear after only two titles just like the Pick Your Path tales before it.

Choose Your Own Adventure: Transformers's Find Your Fate...Junior

These books are narrated entirely in present-tense, a necessity of requiring the reader to make active choices. Unlike some multipath adventures which are told in the second-person to indicate that you are actually a human character physically present in the story, these books are told mostly in third-person, usually just switching over to second-person when you must make a decision for one or more characters. The only other places where the narrator regularly switches to second-person are some of the negative outcomes, for the express purpose of brow-beating you for getting the Autobots killed with your idiotic choices.

The covers are a mix of package and toy art, with at least one character in something close to their box or card art pose.The first six books, representing the pre-Movie era (books #7-9 are clearly Movie or post-Movie era), were also sold as a box set. The outer sleeve is mostly red, and uses a cropped version of Battle Drive's cover art on both sides.