


Books in series

The Haunted House
1981

Sunken Treasure
1982

Your Very Own Robot
1982

The Green Slime
1982

Help! You're Shrinking
1983

Indian Trail
1983

Dream Trips
1983

The Bigfoot Mystery
1983

The Lake Monster Mystery
1983

The Tower of London
1984

The Polar Bear Express
1984

The Mummy's Tomb
1985

Fire!
1985

The Fairy Kidnap
1985

Lost Dog!
1985

Ghost Island
1986

Owl Tree
1986

Sand Castle
1986

The Great Zopper Toothpaste Treasure
1988

A Day with the Dinosaurs
1988

You Are Invisible
1989

Stranded!
1989
Authors

I was born in Davenport, Iowa, and grew up in Rockaway Beach, New York. I read straight through my childhood, with breaks for food, sleep, and the bathroom. I went to college in Bennington, Vermont, moved to New York City, and took a job in publishing so I could get paid for reading. I read so much bad fiction that I needed a break, so I moved to London, and from there I traveled to Morocco, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan India, Nepal, and Ceylon. I came back to America, wandered around some more—to Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize—and on returning to New York decided to study Tibetan Buddhist painting (called thangka painting) in Boulder, Colorado. I painted thangkas for many years. Each one took anywhere from several weeks to a few months to complete, and at long last I understood that this was not the ideal way for me to make a living. Only a few hundred Americans collected thangkas, and they wanted old ones, painted by Tibetan monks. It was time to make a change. So I took another publishing job, this time in children’s books. I found that I liked children’s books a lot, and before long, I became an editor. Years passed. I was encouraged to write. I scoffed at the idea that I had anything to write about. I edited some wonderfully talented authors—Virginia Hamilton, Philip Isaacson, Clyde Robert Bulla, Gloria Whelan, Robin McKinley, Joan Vinge, Garth Nix, and Chris Lynch, among others—with great enjoyment. Writing seemed like torture by comparison. Then, to my amazement, I found myself writing a book and having a good time—simultaneously! The book was ALIENS FOR BREAKFAST, and I enjoyed writing it because my co-author was Jonathan Etra. Jon (who died of heart disease in 1990) was a close friend with a wild sense of humor, and collaborating with him changed my opinion of writing forever. After ALIENS FOR BREAKFAST, and ALIENS FOR LUNCH, which we also co-wrote, I began to think that writing could be interesting fun. And now that I’ve been doing it full-time for more than ten years, I can tell you why I like it better than a job. First, I can work in my bathrobe. (To the FedEx man and the UPS man, I am "the woman in the plaid flannel robe.") Second, I can eat when I’m hungry, choose when to take phone calls, and walk my dogs any time. Third, the only meetings I have—and they’re short—are with the dry cleaner and the post office ladies. Fourth, I can read whatever I please. I may tell people I’m doing research when I read about horse-trekking, or hunting in ancient Greece, or 16 ways to better compost, but the truth is, I’m not doing research, I’m having a good time. Which I think is still allowed.

Raymond A. Montgomery (born 1936 in Connecticut) was an author and progenitor of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure interactive children's book series, which ran from 1979 to 2003. Montgomery graduated from Williams College and went to graduate school at Yale University and New York University (NYU). He devoted his life to teaching and education. In 2004, he co-founded the Chooseco publishing company alongside his wife, fellow author/publisher Shannon Gilligan, with the goal of reviving the CYOA series with new novels and reissued editions of the classics. He continued to write and publish until his death in 2014.

Edward Packard attended and graduated from both Princeton University and Columbia Law School. He was one of the first authors to explore the idea of gamebooks, in which the reader is inserted as the main character and makes choices about the direction the story will go at designated places in the text. The first such book that Edward Packard wrote in the Choose Your Own Adventure series was titled "Sugarcane Island", but it was not actually published as the first entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. In 1979, the first book to be released in the series was "The Cave of Time", a fantasy time-travel story that remained in print for many years. Eventually, one hundred eighty-four Choose Your Own Adventure books would be published before production on new entries to the series ceased in 1998. Edward Packard was the author of many of these books, though a substantial number of other authors were included as well. In 2005, Choose Your Own Adventure books once again began to be published, but none of Edward Packard's titles have yet been included among the newly-released books.