The "Adventure" series is a collection of children's adventure novels by Canadian-born American author Willard Price. The fourteen-book series chronicles the exploits of budding teenage zoologists Hal and Roger Hunt, as they travel around the world capturing exotic and dangerous animals for their father's wildlife collection.
Shortly before his death, in 1983, Price commented 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.
Video Willard Price's Adventure series
Characters
Hal and Roger Hunt
The sons of respected animal collector John Hunt, Hal and Roger have taken a year off school to help capture animals for their father's collection on Long Island, after which the captive specimens are sold to zoos, circuses and nature parks. In Amazon Adventure, the boys' literary debut, Hal is eighteen years old and Roger is thirteen 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 but just as resilient and resourceful as his older brother.
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 enemy, the cunning "Reverend" Merlin Kaggs, appears as a villain in more than one book.
Maps Willard Price's Adventure series
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 English 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 Fraser and Roger's daughter Amazon meet for the first time, before sending them off on an adventure to save the rare Amur leopard. Fans of the original titles will be surprised to learn that brothers Hal and Roger, who enjoyed a close relationship as teenagers, sent off as they were by their father to capture animals alive for zoos, 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."
Legacy
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." English novelist David Mitchell has cited the Adventure series as among his favourite books as a child.
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." He adds that:
Price acknowledges decolonization but reproduces colonialist tropes in his portrayal of Africa. His adventure stories illustrate the sort of geographical literature that critics sought to change, initially to catch up with the facts and values of decolonization, ultimately to contribute to the critical transformation of those facts and values.
Books
Willard Price
Anthony McGowan
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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