Title: Amazon Adventure
Author: Willard
Price
Publisher:
Jonathan Cape
Publish
date: (First) 1951
ISBN: 0 340 16303 8
This is
Steve Irwin in text form, for colonialists.
What, more
detail?
The hero of
the piece (‘Hal Hunt’, would you believe) goes on an animal-collecting
expedition to the Amazon with experienced, reliable Dad, and his rapscallion younger
brother. Guess who always comes out shiny-conscienced and knowledgeable in the
various scrapes they get into? Dad gets called away on an emergency,
the two boys carry on the collecting expedition on their own, succeeding exultantly
against impossible odds, hostile tribes and even more hostile Gringos. Cue
triumphant music as they board the ship home.
It’s easy
to look down the snoot at something like this. With its now-distasteful ideas
about… so many things, its less-than-literary style, and excessive use of
character foils and diversions, Tolstoy it ain’t. But the genuine enthusiasm
for the animals described is endearing, and there’s some lively anthropomorphic
imagery going on there in the individual scenes. The near-messianic zeal to get
its audience on side while they’re still a tender age has to be admirable. Hey,
if it gets my son reading (which is seems to be doing), I’ll vote it as a top
novel. Mr Price done good.
Three moose
hoofs up out of five. Which is not a bad score at all, for a 1950s boys-own
adventure.
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