Who invented Choose Your Own Adventure?

Choose Your Own Adventure was invented by Edward Packard, who came up with the branching-story idea in the late 1960s while making up bedtime tales for his daughters and letting them decide what happened next. He wrote 'Sugarcane Island' around 1969, though it was not published until 1976. The format became a phenomenon when Bantam Books launched the numbered Choose Your Own Adventure series in 1979, with Packard and R. A. Montgomery as its central authors. Montgomery later ran Chooseco, the company that still holds the trademark on the name. So the concept traces to Packard, and the brand grew through both writers. The branching approach they popularized is exactly what modern visual builders let anyone create.