Throwback Thursday: African Adventure

Throwback Thursday is a new feature at Reading Lark. We'll still be doing some Book Boyfriend Posts and Book BFF Posts on Thursdays as well, but the Larks wanted a little variety on Thursdays. Throwback Thursday will allow us to celebrate some of the reads we loved way back when...

African Adventure (Hal & Roger Hunt Adventures #6)

By: Willard Price

Release Date: 1963

I think my entire childhood could be defined by African Adventure by Willard Price. I stumbled across it one day at the library and there began a love affair which has spanned decades. It had all the adventure and animals that a young biologist could ever want - and I give it as much credit as I give Sir David Attenborough for instilling in me a lifelong love of nature. 

I loved learning facts about weird animals that I'd never heard of, many of which I still trot out today to inquisitive young students. I read and reread this book, and the rest of the series, so many times that my father would roll his eyes when he saw me with one of them and ask if I was on to reading Aardvark Adventure yet... I'd simply reply that that one didn't exist and he was being silly. My love of Africa was seeded with these books too, and 2008 saw me live my own African Adventure, just like Hal and Roger Hunt, albeit with a little less danger. 

 Of course by today's political standards, capturing animals from the wild for exhibiting in zoos is just not the done thing, so recommending these books comes with a caveat that this would need explaining to the reader but, when I have children, I will get my books out, dust them off and enjoy some awesome old-fashioned tales of wild Africa.

Goodreads:

Hal and Roger, on safari in Africa, find the bogus WHITE HUNTER accompanying them is hindering their attempts to capture wild animals. Worse is to come, however, in the shape of an evil Witch Doctor who is determined to kill the Hunt brothers. . .