You Are a Superstar

Choose Your Own Adventure #91

by Edward Packard

The reader has always been pretty good in sports but nothing special. Then he or she suddenly begins doing phenomenally at everything, a doctor announces that the reader has undergone a genetic shift that has created superstar potential--at anything! 10 and up.

Genres: Choose Your Own Adventure, Gamebooks, Childrens

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1989

About the author

Edward Packard attended and graduated from both Princeton University and Columbia Law School. He was one of the first authors to explore the idea of gamebooks, in which the reader is inserted as the main character and makes choices about the direction the story will go at designated places in the text.

The first such book that Edward Packard wrote in the Choose Your Own Adventure series was titled "Sugarcane Island", but it was not actually published as the first entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. In 1979, the first book to be released in the series was "The Cave of Time", a fantasy time-travel story that remained in print for many years. Eventually, one hundred eighty-four Choose Your Own Adventure books would be published before production on new entries to the series ceased in 1998. Edward Packard was the author of many of these books, though a substantial number of other authors were included as well.

In 2005, Choose Your Own Adventure books once again began to be published, but none of Edward Packard's titles have yet been included among the newly-released books.

Reviews

[Nick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

The core conceit of the Choose Your Own Adventure series is (unsurprisingly) the ability to make choices that meaningfully alter the plot of the book. In You are a Superstar, you are given the choice to become a superstar (unsurprisingly) in seven different areas of sports or entertainment, but outside of that initial choice your character essentially careens on rails directly on the path to superstardom without any other meaningful choices. On the few occasions where something else happens, you're presented with a choice at the very end of your journey to being a superstar and both paths immediately lead to an ending where you succeed or fail (or possibly succeed in a different way). Compounding the general lack of choice, Edward Packard is a dull writer who goes into unnecessary technical detail in each field where you become a superstar; if you're not a fan of baseball (which I thankfully am) you'll be confused by the liberally-dropped baseball terminology, while if you're not a fan of tennis (which I unfortunately am not) you'll be confused by the liberally-dropped tennis terminology. Insider language is fine when the whole book is about that area - such as skiing terminology in a book primarily about skiing that would appeal to kids that like to ski - but when it's about potentially being a superstar in seven different, unrelated fields you're going to lose the audience on multiple paths.

[Speck Rejk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting in that unlike all other cyoa packard decided to make every path be good without any bad things happening at all. So , it is relieving and kind of fun to breeze down easy st. like a bonus level in a vid game where youre just grabbing stars, but there is no real choice making or suspense/conflict. Its fun as a one-off extra

[JKR · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really your ordinary choose your own adventure book - more a way to live out several childhood fantasies in one book.

[Sheila Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

the adventures that I went through when I was bored I just read these books over and over again you would never get to the end of the story.