This series was my first encounter with such “game book” genre. I had my very first CYOA book when I was at my 4th grade elementary school. The first book’s title was “The Cave of Time”. It was very popular books in early 80s (the other popular book series at that time was “The Famous Five” by Enid Blyton which I will post my review on it).
Perhaps you might ask, why would I post a book review of this vintage book series? For few reasons. First, it’s to celebrate for more than 30 years since I first owned and read this book series which enriched my knowledge and creativity. Second, to celebrate my joy of finding out that the series is still available to buy and there are more titles after the original series.
When I found out about the existence of the series after so many years of vacuum, I was astonished by how many titles of the series were published (original series has 184 titles). The original series of CYOA was published by Bantam Books. And then Chooseco and McGraw-Hill Education published the modern series of CYOA and the other varieties of the series.
When I was a kid, I only had luxury of owning just two books of CYOA. First book was “The Cave of Time” by Edward Packard. The second book was “Journey Under The Sea” by R.A. Montgomery. Besides Edward Packard and R.A. Montgomery, there are few other authors for CYOA series. However, those two were considered as the pioneer of CYOA. The illustrations of the book was exciting and made the mind of a young kid go wild into unlimited imagination. Since each book has several different possible endings, it was a very attractive feature that may cause kids like me at that time to spend more time reading the books since you never know what is the next possible ending if you choose a different choice. The book will tell you to go to certain page based on your selection of answer/choice.
Honestly, I can’t wait until I can get my hands on the whole titles of CYOA series. It might cost a fortune to collect them all. I actually now prefer if they actually publish them as electronic books or apps as it will be very handy to read them on my iPad or iPhone to make it even more portable. The original books actually already have good size for portability. It’s not thick and small enough for kids to put the books in their bags but perhaps too big to put in the pants’ pocket. But having the real books also have another “advantage” which you can display them on your bookcase and may wow geeks like myself. Come on, it’s the whole CYOA series books for God’s sake!
For details, there is a Wikipedia article about it:
Chooseco, which reissues the CYOA series, has their own website which you can find all collections of CYOA from different times:
Amazon also has some of the CYOA series books:
Box Set 1:
Box Set 2:
Box Set 3:
I would recommend to read the first CYOA vintage which is “The Cave of Time”, The Choose Your Own Adventure #1 book:
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