Willard Price books

I loved these books as a child. Hal and Roger travelled the world, they were portrayed as the goodies because they were collecting the animals alive for zoos not hunting to kill!!! Somewhat dated now but they gave me an appreciation of gorillas as being not king-kong-type monsters and I vividly remember you can murder someone (or make them v ill) by cutting up an animal's whiskers (big cat I think) and putting it in their food, it would pierce their gut!

I see from googling that they were commissioning a new book, based on the original protagonists' kids and an Amur leopard adventure!

 

Arctic adventure and tiger adventure were my favourites a huge part of my childhood, never read whale adventure.
Wasn't the New Guinea based book called cannibal adventure?

 

Yep you have another fan right here!

Love the whole series, read them over and over again - South Sea Island Adventure sticks in my mind as one of my Favorites, but I really did devour them avidly!

Progressed onto the Gerrald Durrell Books and more textual books from a Willard Price springboard.

The last time I saw them on the shelf in the bookshop was a few years ago when my local Borders store was closing - I admit to getting all misty eyed and whistful - but they had updated the covers

 

It was to my recollection.

Another fan here, I loved them as a child and worked hard searching the local library, "bring and buy sales" and book stores until I'd managed to read them all (in totally the wrong order). Each new "find" was exciting for me.

The things I remember most were the punches to the solar plexus and the way they seemed to continuously stumble accross amazingly rare animals (including a white Gorilla if my memories correct, though not sue if this was pre-Snowball). I also remember the Leopard whisker murder method.

I remember Whale Adventure for what it taught me about the contrast between old-style whaling (complete with Captain Bligh type figure) and the more apalling modern (at the time) factory ship methods.

 

I used to be given these books all the time on my birthday. Absolutely love them!

I currently have Amazon, Tiger, African, Safari, Arctic, South Seas, Volcano, Gorilla, Underwater and Elephant, although I have never got round to reading the Volcano one. They were (and probably still are) great fun to read, even with the zoogeographical inaccuracies (tigers, Bactian camels and red pandas in the Gir Forest, anyone?)

In fact, I think I might have to dig them out and read them all again at some point soon.

 

Hm, I know at least two equivalent series which were my favorites in childhood. Although they were rather better researched.

 

Had to have a google!! - I didn't realise Willard was so old when he was writing them - he was born in the 1883 so he didn't start this series until his 60's

anyway a list is always good..

Amazon Adventure (1949)
South Sea Adventure (1952)
Underwater Adventure (1954)
Volcano Adventure (1956)
Whale Adventure (1960)
African Adventure (1963)
Elephant Adventure (1964)
Safari Adventure (1966)
Lion Adventure (1967)
Gorilla Adventure (1969)
Diving Adventure (1970)
Cannibal Adventure (1972)
Tiger Adventure (1979)
Arctic Adventure (1980)

attached images of the old and new style covers - the lion one is exactly the covers I had.
But...

Shock horror - they are being revised and updated - with a new adventure being due - see new Leopard cover and the blurb from Amazon says:

Product Description
Adventure, animals and action in the first authorized Willard Price book by award-winning author Anthony McGowan, for 8+ readers.
Deep in the remote forests of Siberia, a mother Amur leopard, one of the rarest big cats in the world, senses danger. Something faster than any human and deadlier than any tiger.
Meanwhile Amazon Hunt, aged twelve, is recruited from England by Tracks in America, ready to take off at a moment's notice to rescue wild animals under threat - no matter how great the danger.
Now Amazon and her thirteen-year-old cousin Frazer must brave the Russian wilderness to save the Amur leopard, before a blazing forest fire wipes out the race - for good . . .

Anthony McGowan is a multi-award-winning author of books for adults, teenagers and younger children. He has a life-long obsession with the natural world, and has travelled widely to study and observe it. He has also written feature articles and travel journalism for The Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard and Mail on Sunday.

What happened to Hal & Roger?

 

The first I read was in our school library, Gorilla Adventure - always thought Gog was a great name for a gorilla - and not long after I bought Diving Adventure in paperback form, one of the first books I ever bought at age ten. I suspect I still have it, in a box in storage somewhere.

I also remember Hal punching people in the solar plexus, often followed by an uppercut. And when he was unsure of something zoological, he always "looked in his manual".

Despite the fanciful nature of the stories, I read about a lot of species I had never heard of before (like Pygmy Marmosets, Green Mambas and Honey Badgers). Next year I'm hoping to see Mountain Gorillas in Uganda and I'm planning on making a sidetrip to the R'wenzori Mountains - the Mountains of the Moon.

I was also looking for the books in my local Borders last year, I thought it would be fun to read them all again, but there didn't seem to be any available at the time (so I bought the Tintin series instead).



Hix

 

Cool - I'm a Tintn & Asterix fan too - I've been collecting Asterix books in the different languages they are printed in for a while now - it's a great way to learn another language - if you want wild boar, magic potion and hitting Romans in your vocabulary

 

I'm glad to read that Willard Price was so much a part of everyone's childhood.I loved them all, and read them voraciously. One of my greatest joys of parenthood has been buying a set of all of them, and reading them aloud to my son. They are, frankly, dreadful: the animal information is often dodgy, the portrayal of "the natives" is patronising at best, and the methods supposedly used to catch animals are laughable. But nonetheless they are brilliant!

 

Very amusing chli, but save the Amur leopard????, if i remember correctly they only ever brought back 1 of everything!

 

Hollywood heavies are beating a path to Hokitika and they're lawyered up!

 

I'm picturing Bindi Irwin and some hideously precocious American brat!

 

Well, this one found it amusing.



Hix