The Worst Day of Your Life

Choose Your Own Adventure #100

by Edward Packard, Frank Bolle (Illustrator)

The reader's choices determine the course of a boy's trip to spend time working on his uncle's pig farm while his family visits Hawaii

Genres: Choose Your Own Adventure, Gamebooks, Childrens

116 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1990

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

[Hamidreza · Rating 1 out of 5]

واقعا یکی حقش نیست . کاش میشد نیم هم نمره داد . افتضاح بود . درسته ، شاید بعد از خوندنش با خودت بگی خب نویسنده قصدش این بوده که بفهمونه باید دلیل قاطع گرفت . نباید توی تصمیماتمون سست باشیم ... ولی ادوارد پاکارد ، سعی کرد این مفهومو به بدترین شکل ممکن به آدم بفهمونه . در ضمن روی چاپ فارسی اش نوشته ، یک داستان با 38 پایان متفاوت ، ولی من شمردم دیدم 14 تا پایان داشت . در ضمن از این 14 تا فقط 4 تاشون به خیر و خوشی تموم شد ؛ بقیه عبارت بودند از ( در ضمن زاویه دید کتاب ، دوم شخص مفرد بود ، یعنی مثل این پایان ها میگفت که ، تو فلان کار رو میکنی ... ) : توی شن روان مردم - توسط پلنگی خورده شدم - توسط پلنگی به شدت زخمی شده و به بیمارستان رفتم - در اتوبوسی بودم که گردباد اومد و اتوبوس رو با خودش برد -یک تمساح من رو خورد - با سر در اسید فرو رفتم - با گاز گلخانه ای مردم و ... . فک کنم حالا فهمیدید چرا میگم چرته . در ضمن خیلی هم طول کشید تا کتابو تموم کنم . مجبور شدم کل کتابو تیک بزنم تا بفهمم کجا ها رو نخوندم

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

That would have to be April 18, 1986 then.

[Jen]

You could choose your own adventure but not your gender.

[Nick Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know if it was deliberate to fit with The Worst Day of Your Life's downer theme, but the copy I have was bound with the interior pages upside-down.

Kind of an odd choice for the vaunted number one-hundred in a series, this book lives up to its title by dragging the point of view character through an unrelenting slog of miserable occurrences. It's well-written enough - especially given that RA Montgomery and Edward Pakard, two of the series' worst authors, co-wrote it (and without any non-white people using magic or the sudden appearance of aliens, a small miracle for Montgomery) - but it's lacking in anything remotely resembling fun. The best case scenario for an ending is enduring days of humiliation and discomfort, but using that to become an athlete. All the other endings involve suffering or death. You would think that the centennial edition of the CYOA series would be more celebratory, but this is just depressing.

Also, this is a book that takes place on a midwestern pig farm and has two endings where you're killed by an animal, but both of those somehow manage to be exotic animals and there's no outcome where you're eaten by pigs.

Edward Packard, what are you doing?

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the Choose your Own Adventure books are based on a great idea, you decide your fate, read one, I enjoyed a few when I was a teenager.

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 3 out of 5]

So you can't go to Hawaii, you have to work on a form, the bus shuts down, a storm is coming, what could be worst? You choose the adventure!

[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.

[Jennifer Matchett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic 80s childhood series