Book review: Willard Price

One of the first book series I ever read, when I was nine years old, was Willard Price's Adventure series.

For those who don't know, the 14-book series is about two teenage brothers, Hal and Roger, who help their father by travelling around the world catching wild animals, which they then sell to zoos.

I'd suggested the series to Mulan and Miya for a few years, but until now other books had taken priority.

Finally, last week we got four of the books free at a local book exchange, including the first two.  Mulan and I have now read the first, Amazon Adventure, and Mulan is continuing with the second, South Sea Adventure.

Sadly, the stories haven't aged well.

Price was born in 1887, and wrote the books between 1949 and 1980, basing the stories on many of his own personal travels.  At the beginning of our 2012 book edition, the granddaughters of Price add an introduction, which includes:

Of course, we must remember that, back then, searching for animals for zoos was a forward-thinking, conservationist approach to saving rare species, and a way to teach people about endangered animals.  The language used by Roger and Hal to describe people of other countries and customs was appropriate at the time of writing, and reflects a period when very little was known about different cultures.

That's a fair comment.  The books are a product of their times.

Miya loves animal stories, and I had initially thought they would be prefect for her.  But she's decided for herself that she would rather not read them, after hearing from us some of what's in them.

To give my thoughts in advance, I wouldn't put these books on a recommended reading list for primary aged children.  At best, I think they could be read by older children alongside historical and cultural discussions.  If the children want to read them, it would help to explicitly discuss the assumptions and values presented in the books, to understand why we don't do things that way anymore.

I'm not suggesting "cancelling", or boycotting, these sorts of culturally inappropriate books.  I just think they've been superseded, and it's not a great idea for young children to unconsciously absorb wrong ideas uncritically.

The two issues that Price's granddaughters pick out, conservation and culture, are worth commenting on.

Conservation: Chapter 18 of Amazon Adventure shows clearly the overall attitude throughout the book.  The intention is good, but the facts are wrong.  The characters (and presumably Price) mistakenly think that natural resources are nearly limitless, and so consequently have a casual attitude to destructive use.

In the story, the brothers meet up with a pioneer who moved from the city to farm the Amazon.  They discuss together how rich in resources the Amazon is, saying that more people should move there:

The most important thing is peace in the world.  And why don't we have peace?  Because there is too much suffering and hunger.  If the Amazon is brought in to production it can relieve that suffering and hunger.

We now know, 70 years later, that bringing the Amazon in to production has not relieved suffering and hunger.  Rather it has irreversibly destroyed huge parts of the Amazon, with many follow-on effects harming both the environment and people.

This attitude of limitless resource fits in with how the brothers catch their animals throughout the book.  Too often, to catch one animal they kill others around them.  They have little sense of their own destructiveness.

Further, the characters show no deep feeling for the pain and suffering they are causing to the individual animals they either catch or kill.  The casualness makes for a slightly uncomfortable read.

Culture: The characters' attitude to people of other cultures is similar to their attitude to the environment.  Often, they bluster on in, with little awareness of or regard to the damage they're causing.  There's an overall Eurocentric attitude in the characters -- mild amusement, lack of care, and subtle underlying sense of superiority.  There are lots of examples of this, such as:

(a) Casually flying a plane through a village hut, and coming "to a halt in the living-room-dining-room-bedroom among the members of a very startled family."  The only comment was, "luckily none of the Indians was hurt, or four white heads might have been added speedily to the brown ones on the shelves."

(b) Casually buying a shrunken human head.  It was the head of a respected warrior, "a wise and good man".  They didn't catch his name, but as it sounded a bit like Charlie they decided to call him that.  They tied him by his hair to a post on their boat.

I once read an observation that colonial-era travel stories often follow a similar theme, with the travellers finding the going getting progressively harder, with more setbacks, the further they get from London -- smooth train to the coast, boat to Europe, unreliable transport to Africa, etc, etc.  On their return journey things reverse and get progressively easier.

That makes sense.  For a Londoner.

But these old travel stories often apply the same thinking to inhabitants of other regions.  The non-Londoners find it equally hard when they're away from London, and it gets easier for them as they approach London.

There's a hint of this in Price's books.  The brothers' first stop in the Amazon is a local village that is used by Westerners as an airport and trading centre, where they're offered the services of a local guide.  They also acquire the use of a dugout canoe, the standard means of transport in the area.  Oddly, their local guide is nervous and uncomfortable after a few hours of paddling, and within 24 hours he's travelled beyond his comfort zone.  He turns around and heads back home to the village.  He gives the appearance of struggling in the Amazon just as much as the brothers, when surely it would be his familiar backyard.

To sum up, if the girls want to read the rest of the Adventure series, we'll seek the books out.  We've talked about some of the issues and they can see things for themselves.  But I wouldn't recommend the books or go out of my way to keep copies in my bookshelf.  I think Mulan said she'll read the first two books since we've got them, but probably won't bother with the rest.  Most likely we'll return the books to the book exchange.