“Choose Your Own Adventure” Creator R.A. Montgomery Dead at 78

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Every adventure has to end sometime:R.A. Montgomery, the author and
publisher who launched theChoose Your Own Adventureseries that got a
generation of '80s kids hooked on reading, died Sundayat his home in
Vermont. He was 78.
A cause of death hasn't been made public.
Montgomery createdChoose Your Own Adventurein 1977 when he spun Edward
Packard's interactive kids' story,Sugarcane Island, into a concept for
an entire series.
He started publishing the books with Bantam 2 years later.
The series has now expanded to 230 books, selling a total of 250
million copies worldwide.
Although Montgomery eventually brought on other writers, he initially
split theCYOAwriting duties evenly with Packard.
Starting with book #2, Journey Under the Sea, he went on to write more
than 50 books forChoose Your Own Adventure and its various spin offs.
In 2003, Montgomery founded a company called ChooseCo to revive the
series and reprint several of the original adventures. His final book,
Gus vs. the Robot King, about a kid who's jealous of a robot sidekick,
came out in September.
He's survived by his wife, co-author and ChooseCo cofounder, Shannon Gilligan.
Credit: Gawker