R. A. Montgomery

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Raymond Almiran Montgomery^[1] (born 1936) is an American author and progenitor of the Choose Your Own Adventure interactive children's book series. 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 is currently rewriting a 450 page draft of a novel about modern day China.^{[citation needed]}