TY - JOUR
T1 - Rearing Children of the Market in the "You" Decade
T2 - Choose Your Own Adventure Books and the Ascent of Free Choice in 1980s America
AU - Cook, Eli
N1 - Publisher Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2020.
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - Exploring some of the key tenets of neoliberal American culture, this article examines the historical forces behind the meteoric rise of interactive "Choose Your Own Adventure"(CYOA) children's books in the 1980s. Despite selling over 250 million copies worldwide and becoming the fourth most popular children's series of all time, the CYOA phenomenon has yet to be placed in its larger social, economic, historical or cultural context. When explaining the rise of interactive narratives, previous literature has mostly focussed on technological change - namely the invention of video games, computer consoles and hypertext narratives. Moving away from such claims, this article demonstrates how the incredible success of solely text-based CYOA books stemmed largely from the cultural ascent of individual market choice to the heart of American notions of agency, liberty, subjectivity and selfhood in the 1970s and 1980s.
AB - Exploring some of the key tenets of neoliberal American culture, this article examines the historical forces behind the meteoric rise of interactive "Choose Your Own Adventure"(CYOA) children's books in the 1980s. Despite selling over 250 million copies worldwide and becoming the fourth most popular children's series of all time, the CYOA phenomenon has yet to be placed in its larger social, economic, historical or cultural context. When explaining the rise of interactive narratives, previous literature has mostly focussed on technological change - namely the invention of video games, computer consoles and hypertext narratives. Moving away from such claims, this article demonstrates how the incredible success of solely text-based CYOA books stemmed largely from the cultural ascent of individual market choice to the heart of American notions of agency, liberty, subjectivity and selfhood in the 1970s and 1980s.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85081606948&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0021875819001476
DO - 10.1017/S0021875819001476
M3 - Article
SN - 0021-8758
VL - 55
SP - 418
EP - 445
JO - Journal of American Studies
JF - Journal of American Studies
IS - 2
ER -
