| Adventure Double: "Arctic Adventure", "Safari Adventure" (Adventure Double) | 
 enlarge | Author: Willard Price
Publisher: Red Fox
Category: Book
List Price: £5.99
Buy New: £2.48
You Save: £3.51 (59%)
New (25) Used (8) from £2.10
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 9315
Media: Paperback
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 5.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0099487721
EAN: 9780099487722
ASIN: 0099487721
Publication Date: July 7, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book sourced directly from the publisher. Delivery in 3-5 days. Customer service 7 days per week
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| Customer Reviews:
Novelty value only for us children of the 80s! January 9, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I loved Willard price as a child and when I saw this in the bookshop, I couldn't resist picking it up to read again as someone in my mid-30s. However, reading it, it's very easy to see how far children's literature has come since the early 80s. By modern standards, Price's adventures are excruciatingly poor. They have a modicum of educational value from a environmental / naturalist point of view, but I found a number of glaring inaccuracies in some of Price's facts about animals / geography. The plots are somewhat politically incorrect these days - rampaging around the world picking up animals willy-nilly to sell to zoos? Good heavens! If you're of a conservationist bent, you'd be horrified to the lack of responsibility that the Hunt brothers show towards the local wildlife! Furthermore, on a slightly darker note, reading `'Arctic Adventure, it's also tempting to accuse Price of latent racism, describing Eskimos repeatedly as `ignorant'! Or if nor racist, then certainly thoroughly patronizing. The characters in general are very Scooby-Doo-ish. The good guys are all white teeth and broad shoulders, while the bad guys are the squint-eyed Bah! brigade!
The plots are quite simple - here's an animal, pick it up, crate it and send it to their father's animal farm in New York to be sold to a zoo. They are also quite laughable - the ease with which these animals are picked up are hilarious - Roger Hunt manages to domesticate a polar bear in about two paragraphs; when Hal Hunt sees an Arctic fox on the trail, he `scoops it up'. An 800-pound seal is dragged through a hole in the ice (!), a killer whale quite willingly follows them (to dry land!)...you get the picture.
In short, these books were great for me, a child of the early 80's with a love for animals. But nowadays, they would need rather a lot of editorial work, but I doubt even that would save them from the slush pile. Someone needs to write an updated series - maybe a pair of young conservationists who move around the world, protecting animals....
Having enjoyed these books so much as a child, I feel like a traitor by hammering Price now. I just feel that not only are modern children far more discerning readers now, but also that their understanding of the world has changed, and Price's work (nearly 30 years old!) doesn't really add much to that understanding' in fact, in many ways, it's harmful. I can't see past two stars here, and one of those is a sweetener to the old days. If you read them yourself as a child, read one if you must and relive warm childhood memories, but if you're a parent wanting to introduce your child to naturalist/adventure fiction, you'll be doing more harm than good by buying them this.
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