Raymond Almiran Montgomery[1] (born 1936) is an American author and progenitor of the Choose Your Own Adventure interactive children's book series.
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Career
Born in Connecticut, Montgomery graduated from Williams College and attended graduate school at Yale University and New York University (NYU). He has devoted his life to teaching and education.
One of the most vibrant aspects of Montgomery’s educational career has been his devotion to the Choose series created in the late 1970s. Working with friends on an initial run of four books (The Cave of Time, Journey Under the Sea, By Balloon to the Sahara, and Space and Beyond), Montgomery penned more than 50 books for this series and its various offspring, including a series for younger readers and a series entitled Choose Your Own Nightmare.
The Choose Your Own Adventure series published 184 titles through Bantam Books between 1979 and 1998, including many by Raymond himself and several by his son Ramsey. It was one of the most popular children’s series of all time, with over 250 million books in print.[citation needed] Since its original publication, the series has been popular with both reluctant and advanced readers. It has also been used in classrooms from elementary school to college.[citation needed] At the advent of the Internet age, the series was used frequently in curricula focused on explaining the interactivity of the world wide web to young children.
Montgomery and partner Shannon Gilligan have turned their full attentions to Choose Your Own Adventure once more. The series is being reissued through Chooseco LLC, in Waitsfield, Vermont. The re-release has been featured in the LA Times and Newsweek magazine, and an electronic version of the first book in the relaunch, The Abominable Snowman, is available as an interactive download for iPod. Montgomery is in the process of updating 36 popular CYOA titles and looks forward to seeing children reading them again. He has also written some of the books in the Bantam/Skylark "Choose Your Own Adventure" series for younger readers. Some of these have been made available as part of the Dragonlark series. In that series, Caravan is written from the perspective of a child living in Tibet. In Indian Trail, the reader is a member of a Native American tribe. He is currently rewriting a 450 page draft of a novel about modern day China.[citation needed] Montgomery said in an interview that he would like to travel and encourage culturally distinct Choose Your Own Adventure books from writers and illustrators in all parts of the world.[1]
CYOA books by R. A. Montgomery
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Re-released CYOA books
- Choose Your Own Adventure Writer's Handbook
- The Abominable Snowman
- Journey Under the Sea
- Space and Beyond
- The Lost Jewels of Nabooti
- Mystery of the Maya
- House of Danger
- The Race Forever
- Escape
- Lost on the Amazon
- Prisoner of the Ant People
- Trouble on Planet Earth
- War with the Evil Power Master
- The Mystery of Ura Senke by Shannon Gilligan
- The Case of the Silk King by Shannon Gilligan
- Beyond Escape!
- Secret of the Ninja by Jay Leibold
- The Brilliant Dr. Wogan
- Return to Atlantis
- Forecast From Stonehenge (first brand new title)
- Inca Gold by Jim Becket
- Terror in Australia by Shannon Gilligan
- Tattoo of Death
- Silver Wings
- Terror On The Titanic by Jim Wallace
- Search for the Mountain Gorillas by Jim Wallace
- Moon Quest by Anson Montgomery
- Project U.F.O
- Island of Time
- Smoke Jumpers
- Chinese Dragons
- Track Star! (second brand new title)
Choose Your Own Adventure Dragonlark books by R. A. Montgomery
- Caravan
- Indian Trail
- The Haunted House
- Sand Castle (with Keith Newton)
- Your Purrr-fect Birthday
- Your Very Own Robot
Other projects
- A six book non-interactive series for YA readers entitled Trio
- A CD-ROM, Beyond the Wall of Stars
References
External links
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