This content material comprises affiliate hyperlinks. When you purchase by way of these hyperlinks, we might earn an affiliate fee.
2024 marks the forty fifth anniversary of the Choose Your Own Adventure collection’ inception. We’re celebrating right here by rating the basic Choose Your Own Adventure e-book covers of the 20th century and presenting you with the greatest of the greatest. If you’re due for a dose of nostalgia, preserve scrolling to relive these wet Saturday afternoons spent looking for all 25 — or extra — potential endings.
Note: In pulling this piece collectively, I’m deeply indebted to Demian Katz and his Gamebook Web Page, which catalogs copious quantities of information on Choose Your Own Adventure and different gamebook collection. If you’re in search of a branching-path e-book out of your childhood or simply need to take a stroll down reminiscence lane, go spend a while there. You gained’t remorse it.
Choose Your Own Adventure was the brainchild of Edward Packard, who based mostly his branching-path “gamebooks” on the interactive bedtime tales he advised his youngsters. Packard offered the thought to indie writer and RPG author R.A. Montgomery, who revealed Packard’s Sugarcane Island as the first installment in Vermont Crossroads Press’ Adventures of You collection in 1976. Two years later, Montgomery left the press and approached one other writer, Bantam Books, with The Adventures of You. Bantam rechristened the collection and launched it as Choose Your Own Adventure in 1979.
A publishing phenomenon was born.
The eight covers on the checklist under span the first 20 years of Choose Your Own Adventure historical past. That time interval produced some of the wackiest, most memorable covers, but it surely’s not with out its issues. Many of the books and their covers contained racist stereotypes, most predominantly of the Yellow Peril and Islamophobic varieties. Thankfully, the collection’ up to date iterations have tried to rectify these points to a point.
Publishing continues to be overwhelming white, nonetheless, and that scenario was much more dire in the 20th century. As I’m able to inform, all the basic Choose Your Own Adventure books had been written by white authors — principally white males. Women writers had been few and much between; solely two titles listed under have ladies at the helm. Of these two, one was illustrated by a girl of shade: Catherine Huerta, who’s a member of the Pasqua Yaqui Tribe.
This is all to say that whereas I’m all about celebrating the faculty library nostalgia that Choose Your Own Adventure brings, we should even be aware of these tales that had been ignored — or cannibalized — in the course of of creating the collection.
Below, the eight greatest Choose Your Own Adventure e-book covers of the 20th century, ranked.
Ranking Choose Your Own Adventure Book Covers
Gorga, the Space Monster by Edward Packard
Cover by Don Hedin, credited as “Paul Granger.”
Part of the Choose Your Own Adventure for Younger Readers collection from Bantam-Skylark, Gorga, the Space Monster holds rather a lot of enchantment for followers of Nineties summer time journey movies like The Pagemaster and Mac and Me. You’re staying together with your grandparents when a three-eyed purple alien involves city, and its destiny would possibly simply lie in your palms!
But we’re right here to speak about the cowl. Classic Choose Your Own Adventure e-book covers fall roughly neatly into two broad classes: “Does What It Says on the Tin” and “WTF Am I Looking At.” Both are solely legitimate.
Gorga is unquestionably in the first camp. You choose up this cowl anticipating a lighthearted summertime journey with a large purple house monster, and that’s precisely what you get.
Daredevil Park by Sara and Spencer Compton
Cover by Catherine Huerta.
Like most kidlit, Choose Your Own Adventure e-book cowl illustrations leaned towards much less stylized depictions of the tales inside as the collection progressed into the mid-Nineteen Eighties and past. The cowl for Daredevil Park — during which you win a ticket to a pre-opening tour of the world’s most tubular amusement park — might simply slot in with any of a dozen or so MG collection of the time.
What makes this one particular is how menacing it really manages to be. Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks run the full style gamut, from slice-of-life tales and cozy-ish mysteries to laborious science fiction and portal fantasy. Although most books included a handful of grisly endings so that you can meet, only a few covers gave off what you would possibly name horror vibes.
Daredevil Park, on the different hand, really appears prefer it belongs on a tacky Nineteen Eighties horror novella (complimentary), à la a cocaine-fueled Stephen King. The loops on this OSHA violation of a curler coaster preserve your eyes in fixed movement, and also you simply can’t shake the feeling these automobiles full of youngsters are on a literal prepare trip into Hell. It’s simply *chef’s kiss*.
Sabotage by Jay Leibold
Cover by Ralph Reese.
Oh my god, it’s a mirage… of Axis powers. Sabotage‘s cover makes it look like Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang‘s less-cuddly cousin and that alone earns it a spot on this list. At least one reviewer questioned the publisher’s resolution to provide this such a generic title, versus one thing extra indicative of the e-book’s contents, which is a sound criticism. But even with no title in any respect, you simply want one fast look at this cowl to see what this Choose Your Own Adventure e-book is all about. It’s masterful, actually.
The Deadly Shadow by Richard Brightfield
Cover by Don Hedin.
Remember how I mentioned there have been two sorts of basic Choose Your Own Adventure e-book covers? The Deadly Shadow is firmly in the “WTF Am I Looking At” class. This cowl has the whole lot: the disembodied heads of a teenage woman and Christopher Lee as Dracula, an area shuttle, a large plume of hearth erupting from the center of the ocean, a mountain formed like a Totoro, and — most significantly — AU variations of Marion Crane and Norman Bates, who’ve packed up and fled from Norman’s sinisterly overprotective mom. Truly awe-inspiring, this one.
The Movie Mystery by Susan Saunders
Cover uncredited, however probably Thomas Sperling or Sara Kurtz.
As I mentioned earlier than, most Choose Your Own Adventure covers shrink back from wanting like horror. The Movie Mystery fully ignores that rule, absolutely embracing the iconic aesthetics of Nineteen Eighties horror novels whereas nonetheless honoring the collection’ affinity for collaged covers. Much like the Ant People cowl under, this one virtually begs you to select the e-book up.
Unfortunately, readers who strategy The Movie Mystery anticipating a horrific story of suspense will come away upset. As one of the Younger Readers releases, this title was meant for an elementary faculty viewers. Even by a chapter-book metric, nonetheless, it’s a lot, a lot cozier than you’d anticipate. The Move Mystery lies nearer to Encyclopedia Brown than Goosebumps on the kidlit suspense scale.
A wonderful however deceptive cowl, it’s nonetheless one of the greatest that the Choose Your Own Adventure classics have to supply.
Prisoner of the Ant People by R.A. Montgomery
Cover by Ralph Reese.
OK, what’s to not love right here? From the creepy villain up prime — who appears like the lovechild of Gary Oldman’s Dracula and Prince Froglip from The Princess and the Goblin — to the sentient Chicken McNuggets under, this cowl exudes what-the-f*ckery. There’s one thing delightfully retro about this one, prefer it belongs on a Nineteen Fifties pulp novel. It’s the sort of cowl that makes you understand you don’t actually care what occurs inside the e-book so long as you get to expertise it.
Your Code Name Is Jonah by Edward Packard
Cover by Don Hedin, credited as “Paul Granger.”
Another downright pleasant cowl, Don Hedin’s artwork for Your Code Name Is Jonah looks like an alternate illustration for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Like many of the espionage-themed entries in the unique Choose Your Own Adventure collection, this one focuses on out-maneuvering the KGB. I’m undecided precisely how apparent that’s from the cowl; I’m too distracted by the whale, the orange turtleneck/inexperienced plaid blazer ensemble, the Sontaran in a go well with, and that one man’s amazingly cartoonish chin. 10/10 right here, no notes.
The Cave of Time by Edward Packard
Cover by Don Hedin, credited as “Paul Granger.”
Sometimes, a collection takes some time to search out its groove. That’s not the case for the Choose Your Own Adventure books, which launched their greatest cowl proper out of the gate. The Cave of Time is a masterclass in the extraordinary. There’s a really creepy, probably undead knight, a doofy Loch Ness monster, a medieval Chinese soldier holding a f*ck-off spear, and — maybe greatest of all — a T-rex. If anybody ever asks you what the Choose Your Own Adventure books had been all about, simply present them this cowl and allow them to sit with it for some time.
Want extra gamebooks and nostalgia? Check out these pick-a-path books and this ranked checklist of A Wrinkle in Time e-book covers.
Discussion about this post