A huge success in print, works of interactive fiction are now being adapted to new mediums, like the iPad. (Photo by Amara Grautski/CNS)

When anthropology instructor Danielle Cook scoured her Kindle for something new to read recently, one choice popped off the digital page. Cook, 27, was struck by “Choice of the Dragon,” a text-based adventure tale that put her into the story. By making a series of decisions while reading, Cook would ultimately decide the story’s outcome. “Choice of the Dragon” was an updated-throwback to a favorite type of book from Cook’s childhood, one that blurred the line between literature and a game.

Now 20- and-30-somethings like Cook, who relish the chance to regress by watching Nickelodeon reruns, listening to New Kids on the Block and catching episodes of the VH1 series “I Love the ’90s,” have something else to satisfy their thirst for nostalgia:  the reincarnation of interactive fiction like the popular children’s book series “Choose Your Own Adventure.”

Conceived in the late 1960s by Edward Packard after he asked his two daughters to contribute to their own bedtime stories, the books put readers in charge of their own destiny. If a reader wanted the main character to make one choice, she would jump to Page X; but if she wanted to choose a different path, she would jump to Page Y. Eventually, the reader would follow her series of decisions to one of the story’s many possible endings.

Packard joined forces with fellow author Ray Montgomery and the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series was born, selling more than 250 million copies and spawning a rash of imitators, before losing steam in the late 1990s. In 2003,  Montgomery formed a new company, Chooseco, to revive the series, and the books are available for $6.99 to $7.99. Since then, both originators and others who grew up with the series have tried different ways to adapt the original concept to the digital age.

Chooseco has books available in an app for the iPhone available for 99 cents and in January, New York-based Red Crown Productions announced that it would be translating “Choose Your Own Adventure” for film and TV audiences. Just how it will be done has yet to be revealed. “We do have a very specific strategy, and we think it’s a really smart one,” said Shannon Gilligan, the publisher of Chooseco.“But it’s under total wraps. It’s going to be very confidential.”

Others have already made attempts to adapt the Choose-Your-Own concept to video, including the “Choose Your Path” adventures made by a group of Los Angeles filmmakers. The trio known as Chad, Matt & Rob used YouTube to host a series of videos, with each video representing a different choice the viewer has to make about the film’s cast of characters. One adventure titled “The Time Machine” has been watched more than 1.7 million times.

But perhaps the most natural new media home for the old interactive books is the iPad. Packard, who is not affiliated with Chooseco, has teamed up with publisher Simon & Schuster to create U-Ventures, an iPad application for $3.99 that updates the language of his older Choose Your Own Adventure books, while adding new interactive features. Now a user can choose to be a male or female character and can digitally bookmark certain choices, and go back and review them along the way.

Packard is excited about other innovations enabled by the iPad. “You might have a secret word or a code word,” he explained, “and later on in the book you get into a situation where you remember what that is and you can type that in.”

Pamela Rutledge, the director of the Media Psychology Research Center based in Boston, believes that new media can push the boundaries even further by incorporating things like social networking. Instead of just creating an app that’s a more interactive version of a book, she wonders, why not let users communicate to see what other people’s choices are?

“I think that if you’re in the business of thinking about books, it’s probably easier to try and figure out how to make your book more current than it is to step back,” Rutledge said. “I think that’s a challenge with every company and every product to say, ‘What is the bigger picture of what we’re trying to sell?’”

Even without the technological updates, fans of the Choose-Your-Own-style books believe that their appeal just won’t die. But why not? For starters, Pauline Wallin, the president of media psychology for the American Psychological Association, thinks that the right audience was targeted. “Those books are marketed to pre-teens,” Wallin said of the age group that has a lot of curiosity but little experience. “That’s the same group that loves horror movies. Those horror movies are a way of rehearsing what it’s like to be scared and trying on fear and responding to it.” Interactive fiction allows children to experience making choices and living out their consequences.

Danielle Cook, who is still making her way through “Choice of the Dragon,” also believes that these books were able to engage her in a way others could not. “When I was little, I didn’t actually like reading,” said Cook, who lives in Florida. “But with ‘Choose Your Own Adventure,’ I don’t want to say it gave imagination to kids that didn’t have one, but it did put you more in the story.”

Despite millions of fans, who are now grown up, there is still no guarantee that the interactive books will be successful in their latest incarnations. No one knows that better than Edward Packard himself. At first his initial concept was not well received, he recalled. Several major publishers rejected the idea over seven years before the first book, “Sugarcane Island,” was published in 1976. “Every imagined new idea, first it’s scorned,” Packard said, “then it’s finally accepted, and then it’s taken for granted.”