Good news for audiobook fans with a taste for 1980s nostalgia as well as a new generation of intrepid young listeners: The Choose Your Own Adventure books are getting the audio treatment.
Chooseco, the publisher of the books, is partnering with Penguin Random House’s Listening Library to produce audiobook versions of four of the classic children’s game books, written by the late R.A. Montgomery, the companies announced in a news release.
The Choose Your Own Adventure books, which allow young readers to make choices that lead to different endings, launched in 1979 with Montgomery’s Journey Under the Sea and Edward Packard’s The Cave of Time. and Over the next 20 years, nearly 200 installments followed. The original series ended 1999 but was revived by Chooseco four years later.
The new audiobooks will be co-produced by Nick Martorelli and Olivia Langen with narration by Sean Patrick Hopkins (The Burning of the World, I See You’ve Called in Dead). Listeners will be able to “use the controls of their audiobook player to steer the story,” the publishers say.
The collection will comprise four of the series’ most popular books, all written by Montgomery: The Abominable Snowman, Journey Under the Sea, Space and Beyond, and The Lost Jewels of Nabooti.
“I remember reading the Choose Your Own Adventure books in school, [and] holding these in my hands brings me right back,” Martorelli said in a statement. “It’s like being a kid again.”
The audiobooks are set for release on May 26.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
