# Edward Packard - Maker: Author - Date: b. 1931 - Houses: Bantam Books - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/edward-packard/ > A lawyer whose bedtime stories for his children became the second-person branching book, first as Sugarcane Island and then as Bantam's Choose Your Own Adventure, which sold more than 250 million copies. **Why it matters:** Packard invented the format that made millions of children the protagonists of their own books. Choose Your Own Adventure is a direct ancestor of the gamebook boom, of Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf, and of branching interactive fiction. ## Quick answers **Who is Edward Packard?** A lawyer whose bedtime stories for his children became the second-person branching book, first as Sugarcane Island and then as Bantam's Choose Your Own Adventure, which sold more than 250 million copies. **When was Edward Packard born?** Edward Packard was born in 1931 in Huntington, New York. **What is Edward Packard known for?** Edward Packard is best known for Choose Your Own Adventure. **Why does Edward Packard matter to fantasy and games?** Packard invented the format that made millions of children the protagonists of their own books. Choose Your Own Adventure is a direct ancestor of the gamebook boom, of Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf, and of branching interactive fiction. ## Life Edward Burtt Packard Jr. was born on February 16, 1931, in Huntington, on Long Island, New York. He graduated from Princeton University and Columbia Law School and trained as a lawyer. He did not set out to become a children's author, still less to invent a genre. The idea came from bedtime stories. Packard used to tell his children about a boy named Pete, usually stranded on an isolated island. One night he ran out of things for Pete to do and asked his children what they would do instead. They suggested different paths, and he made up an ending for each. What struck him was their enthusiasm. As he later recalled, he wondered: "Could I write this down?" ## Work He wrote it down as *The Adventures of You on Sugarcane Island*, a story in the second person in which the reader, shipwrecked, decides on nearly every page whether to walk the beach or climb the hill and turns to the page for that choice. Many branches end in death; a few lead home. Around 1969–70 the William Morris Agency sent the manuscript to major publishers, and all of them rejected it. Packard shelved it. In the mid-1970s he convinced R. A. Montgomery, co-owner of the small Vermont Crossroads Press with Constance Cappel, to publish it. *Sugarcane Island* appeared in 1976 and reportedly sold about 8,000 copies, a respectable figure for a small regional press. *Publishers Weekly* called it "an original idea, well carried out." Lippincott published his next two, *Deadwood City* and *The Third Planet from Altair*, in 1977 and 1978. Their covers already used the phrase that would become a trademark: "Choose Your Own Adventure in the Wild West" and "in Outer Space." The format was new enough that readers had to be warned at the start not to read the book straight through. Montgomery and Cappel then took the concept to [Bantam Books](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/bantam-books/), which launched [Choose Your Own Adventure](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/choose-your-own-adventure/) in 1979 with Packard's *The Cave of Time*, in which the reader enters a cavern opening onto different eras. Packard and Montgomery became the series' main authors, and Packard wrote more than 50 of its books. He deliberately changed genre from one book to the next, writing a spy story, a space opera, a western, a mystery and a fantasy. He was also the only series author with a recurring character, the apparently ageless scientist Dr. Nera Vivaldi. In *Hyperspace* he wrote himself into the story, and Vivaldi admits she is a fictional character the reader may recognize from other books. The series became one of the biggest in children's publishing. A 1981 *New York Times* article brought national attention, and from 1979 to 1998 Bantam published 184 titles that together sold more than 250 million copies in dozens of languages. Packard kept working with the form afterward. His Space Hawks series was published in mainland China in 2004, and in 2010 he founded U-Ventures to adapt his stories as iPhone and iPad apps, starting with *Return to the Cave of Time*. Simon & Schuster later published revised editions under the same name. ## Legacy Branching narratives had appeared before, in experimental fiction such as Borges's "The Garden of Forking Paths" and in teaching texts. Packard's contribution was to turn it into a mass-market entertainment for children with one simple rule: *you* are the hero. The timing mattered. His books appeared in the same years that *Dungeons & Dragons* spread through American schools and [Colossal Cave Adventure](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/colossal-cave-adventure/) spread across computer networks, and they spoke the same language of choice and consequence. Their influence spread quickly. TSR launched its own Endless Quest line; in Britain, [Ian Livingstone](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/ian-livingstone/) and [Steve Jackson](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/steve-jackson-uk/) added dice and combat to the format with [Fighting Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/fighting-fantasy/) in 1982; and [Joe Dever](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/joe-dever/)'s [Lone Wolf](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/lone-wolf/) turned it into a continuing campaign. Together they made the [Gamebooks & Interactive Books](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/gamebook/) a genre of its own. The second-person, branching structure of [Interactive Fiction & Text Adventures](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/interactive-fiction/), and much later the choice-driven design of narrative video games, all draw on the reading habits Packard's books created. For many readers of a certain age, flipping back to the last choice with a finger holding the page was their first taste of roleplaying. ## Facts - The idea came from bedtime stories: when he ran out of things for his character Pete to do, he asked his children what should happen next. - Publishers rejected his first manuscript for years before Vermont Crossroads Press published The Adventures of You on Sugarcane Island in 1976. - Lippincott's covers for his next two books carried the words 'Choose Your Own Adventure' before Bantam made it a brand. - He wrote The Cave of Time (1979), the first book in Bantam's series. - His recurring scientist Dr. Nera Vivaldi appears across many of his books and, in Hyperspace, acknowledges being a fictional character. - He is the grandfather of actor David Corenswet. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Packard_(writer)) - [Wikipedia: Choose Your Own Adventure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure) - [Official site](https://www.edwardpackard.com/) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.