The Adventure series is a collection of children's adventure novels by Willard Price. The original series, comprising 14 novels, was published between 1949 and 1980, and chronicles the adventures of teenagers Hal and Roger Hunt as they travel the world collecting exotic and dangerous animals. Beginning in 2012, Anthony McGowan published four more novels in the series, which featured Hal and Roger's children.
Writing
Shortly before his death, in 1983, Price wrote that:
My aim in writing the Adventure series for young people was to lead them to read by making reading exciting and full of adventure. At the same time I want to inspire an interest in wild animals and their behavior. Judging from the letters I have received from boys and girls around the world, I believe I have helped open to them the worlds of books and natural history.
Characters
Hal and Roger Hunt are the sons of animal collector John Hunt; they have taken a year off school to help capture animals for their father's collection on Long Island, New York, after which the captive specimens are sold to zoos, circuses and safari parks. In Amazon Adventure, the boys' literary debut, Hal is 18 years old and Roger is 13 years old.
Hal is the typical hero: tall, handsome, and muscular, possessing an almost limitless knowledge of natural history and a caring and trusting disposition. Roger, on the other hand, is an ardent practical joker, often mischievous and cheeky but just as resilient and resourceful as his older brother — sometimes even more resourceful.
Villains
Each novel in the Adventure series is notable for its memorable selection of loathsome villains and enemies. Some of these, through their interactions with Hal and Roger, are led to redeem their past misdeeds, while others simply suffer the consequences of their actions. Only one character, the cunning "Reverend" Merlin Kaggs, appears as a villain in more than one book.
| Title | Year | Characters |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Adventure | 1949 | Shark Sands and his henchmen Croc and Banco |
| South Sea Adventure | 1952 | Merlin Kaggs and Crab |
| Underwater Adventure | 1954 | Skink |
| Volcano Adventure | 1956 | |
| Whale Adventure | 1960 | Captain Grindle |
| African Adventure | 1963 | Joro and Colonel Bigg |
| Elephant Adventure | 1964 | Arab slavers led by the Thunder Man |
| Safari Adventure | 1966 | Judge Singh alias Blackbeard |
| Lion Adventure | 1967 | Black Mane, King Ku, Dugan and Basa |
| Gorilla Adventure | 1969 | Gog, Andre Tieg and Nero |
| Diving Adventure | 1970 | Merlin Kaggs |
| Cannibal Adventure | 1972 | Merlin Kaggs and Witch doctor |
| Tiger Adventure | 1979 | Vic Stone |
| Arctic Adventure | 1980 | Zeb |
Revival
In October 2006, the Price family of Holden, Massachusetts entered into an agreement to sell the copyrights and related legal rights for the fourteen Adventure series titles, plus the right to use Price's name, to London-based literary brand owner and investor Fleming Literary Management for an undisclosed six-figure sum.
In July 2011, it was announced that British author Anthony McGowan had been contracted by Puffin Books to write four new books based on Willard Price's classic wildlife adventures series. The first, Leopard Adventure, will see Hal's son Frazer and Roger's daughter Amazon meet for the first time, before sending them off on an adventure to save the rare Amur leopard. Brothers Hal and Roger, who enjoyed a close relationship as teenagers, have fallen out in the new books.
"Hal Hunt has set up this organisation which goes around the world saving species and his son Fraser works with him on that. He's fallen out with Roger who's a freelance conservationist – there's some sibling rivalry there. Hal's slightly hand in hand with big business, he's slightly compromised, and Roger's more of a free spirit," said McGowan, a fan of the Price novels as a child. "Roger and his wife have disappeared and because Amazon's parents have gone missing, Fraser comes to meet her."
Retrospective reviews
David Barnett, writing for The Guardian in 2010, praised the book series, writing that "Price not only knew all the right buttons to press to excite a young reader – exotic locations, nasty villains, wild animals and lashings of peril – but also managed to weave into his adventures a strong yet subtle conservation message."
Novelists David Mitchell and Mark Gatiss have cited the Adventure series as among their favourite childhood books. Anthony Horowitz discovered the Adventure series at age 11, and has cited the series as an influence on his own writing. “If you read Willard Price," said Horowitz, "you'll find the chemical formula for an Alex Rider book: page-turning, lots of action, lots of activity, good strong characters.”
Criticism
According to Richard Phillips, who studied the politics of the series, Willard Price acknowledges decolonisation in his writing, but does so through a "conventionally colonial lens":
"Dad’ explains why a man participates in the so-called Leopard Society, members of which dress and behave as those wild cats. He reminds his son, ‘This isn’t London. It’s the Dark Continent, and it’s still pretty dark, believe me.’He insists that African independence ‘must not blind us to the fact that outside the cities, away back in the forests, life is just about as savage as it was a hundred years ago. There are still thousands of cannibals in the African jungle.’(African Adventure, 1963)
Books
Willard Price
| Title | Year | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Adventure | 1949 | Hal and Roger travel to the Amazon rainforest, where they embark on an expedition into the uncharted territory of the Pastaza River. |
| South Sea Adventure | 1952 | Hal and Roger become stranded on an island in the South Seas, in the manner of Robinson Crusoe. |
| Underwater Adventure | 1954 | Hal and Roger join the Oceanographic Institute as part of an underwater operation in the South Seas. |
| Volcano Adventure | 1956 | Hal and Roger join forces with volcanologist Dr. Dan Adams to study volcanoes in the Pacific. |
| Whale Adventure | 1960 | Hal and Roger join the crew of a whaling ship, working under the nefarious Captain Grindle. |
| African Adventure | 1963 | Hal and Roger Hunt search for a man-eating leopard, but fall afoul of a sinister organisation known as the Leopard Society. |
| Elephant Adventure | 1964 | Hal and Roger attempt to track down a rare white elephant in Africa's Mountains of the Moon. |
| Safari Adventure | 1966 | Hal and Roger join warden Mark Crosby in Tsavo National Park, where wildlife poaching is a major problem. |
| Lion Adventure | 1967 | Hal and Roger must help save the people of Mtito Andei from a man-eating lion. |
| Gorilla Adventure | 1969 | Hal and Roger search for mountain gorillas deep in the Congo jungle. |
| Diving Adventure | 1970 | Hal and Roger embark on a specimen-collecting trip to Undersea City. |
| Cannibal Adventure | 1972 | Hal and Roger travel to New Guinea, where they make contact with a cannibalistic tribe. |
| Tiger Adventure | 1979 | Hal and Roger are in India, where they search for a rare white tiger, high in the Himalayas. |
| Arctic Adventure | 1980 | Hal and Roger Hunt go to Greenland to capture wild animals and send them to their father's animal farm on Long Island. With the help of Nanook, a huge polar bear, and Olrick, a Greenlandic Inuit, they capture many animals. However, all is not well. They meet an American rogue called Zeb who is determined to kill the two teenagers. |
Anthony McGowan
| Title | Year | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Leopard Adventure | 2012 | Amazon Hunt (age 12, daughter of Roger) and her cousin Frazer (age 13, son of Hal) must brave the Russian wilderness to save the Amur leopard. |
| Bear Adventure | 2013 | Amazon's parents have been lost in a plane crash, and her only hope is that they are wandering the wild forests of Canada. |
| Shark Adventure | 2013 | On a remote Polynesian island, Amazon and Frazer Hunt are saving rare leatherback turtles. |
| Python Adventure | 2014 | Amazon's parents have been kidnapped, and their trail leads to Mumbai, India. |
References
- Rubinstein, Matt (2005), 'Adventure Adventure Archived 2006-08-20 at the Wayback Machine' mattrubinstein.com.au
- Kleinman, Mark (17 November 2006). "Fleming media banks on Price estate". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 6 February 2014.
- "Willard Price & Fleming Literary". Fleming Literary. Archived from the original on 2007-10-08. Retrieved 6 February 2014.
- ^ Flood, Alison (28 July 2011). "Willard Price's Adventure series to be relaunched". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 August 2011.
- David Barnett, "Willard Price's stories make reading an adventure for young people" The Guardian, 21 July 2010. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
- Wyatt Mason, "David Mitchell, the Experimentalist", The New York Times, 25 July 2010. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
- Adams, Tim (December 8, 2019). "Mark Gatiss: 'We live in an age of popinjays – Rees-Mogg, Johnson – and we fall for it'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
- Horowitz, Anthony (March 7, 2020). "In defence of modern children's books". The Spectator. Archived from the original on 2020-07-21. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
- Wallace, Arminta (November 1, 2013). "Alex Rider's nemesis: from terrified teen to assassin". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 2013-11-01. Retrieved July 19, 2020.
- ^ Richard Phillips, "Politics of reading: decolonizing children's geographies" Cultural Geographies (April 2001), 8(2): 125-150. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
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