“Choose Your Own Adventure” by Multiple Authors

 

Bantam Books

Along with Endless Quest series of books (reviewed on November 11^th, 2021) and The Three Investigators (reviewed on March 13^th, 2024), Choose Your Own Adventure books made up much of my adolescent reading schedule. As with Endless Quest (which it predates by three years), the Choose Your Own Adventure series are books aimed at adolescents in which 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 subject matter covered by these works was much broader than Endless Quest, which limited itself to All Things TSR, especially Dungeons & Dragons; thus, time travel, ocean voyages, desert adventures, outer space quests, mysteries, spy thrillers, westerns, medieval tales, road races…innumerable subjects could and were subjected to the CYOA treatment.

 

“The Cave of Time”, by Edward Packard
115 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232288
“Journey Under the Sea”, by R. A. Montgomery
117 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232295
“By Balloon to the Sahara”, by Douglas Terman
117 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553140057
“Space and Beyond”, by R. A. Montgomery
116 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553208917
“The Mystery of Chimney Rock”, by Edward Packard
122 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553209617
“Your Code Name Is Jonah”, by Edward Packard
114 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553209136
“The Third Planet from Altair”, by Edward Packard
117 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553139785
“Deadwood City”, by Edward Packard
113 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553139945
“Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey?”, by Edward Packard
122 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553231816
“The Lost Jewels of Nabooti”, by R. A. Montgomery
121 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232318
“Mystery of the Maya”, by R. A. Montgomery
134 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553231861
“Inside UFO 54-40”, by Edward Packard
118 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553201970
“The Abominable Snowman”, by R. A. Montgomery
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553233322
“The Forbidden Castle”, by Edward Packard
118 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232363
“House of Danger”, by R. A. Montgomery
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553225419
“Survival at Sea”, by Edward Packard
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553227680
“The Race Forever”, by R. A. Montgomery
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553259889
“Underground Kingdom”, by Edward Packard
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232929
“Secret of the Pyramids”, by Richard Brightfield
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232950
“Escape”, by R. A. Montgomery
128 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0553232943

And, for the most part, they were all cool, too. I mean, everything from my youth is seen through a diaphanous haze of nostalgia in which all that was good is crystal clear while all that was bad is blissfully hidden. But I recall not being able to wait for bedtime when I could crack one of these bad boys open and read by the light of an old office lamp my Dad had attached to my headboard. In the years before I discovered History and the Great Men of the World, these books were what thrilled and, to a certain extent, educated me. And they all ignited that love of reading that I have still to this day (as well as my love of collecting books, a blessing and a curse, if I’m to be honest). Choose Your Own Adventure – AND Endless Quest AND The Three Investigators – are just a few of the treasured jewels from my childhood that I will cherish always and that will remain even after these books have crumbled to dust.