Whale Adventure Paperback – 6 Jun. 2013

My kids loved [still love] these books and now the grandchildren will enjoy them. I strongly recommend Willard Price books.

Well crafted, like all the other W Price books. Great exciting adventure story, though this one is particularly out-dated in the general attitude to whaling. All the same, it's certainly opening my boys' eyes to the barbaric nature of whaling, and as such serves a good purpose. Well worth the read.

Still a great read. Hope my kids enjoy it.

Willard Price can do no wrong for our 11.5 year old boy!

I read this book as a child and came back to it as a father, reading to my two sons. Price's books have aged much better than many of their era.In the very first book of this series, Amazon Adventure, the Hunt boys' father admonishes his sons for being sniffy about the food offered to them by their hosts, an Amazonian tribe. People all over the world, he says, have different ways of life, many of them at least as good as our own. Not bad for a book published in 1949.Whale Adventure follows a fairly well-tested plot outline. The boys' father sends them, as part of their training and education, on a trip to find animals which he will then sell to zoos (remember, 1949). In this case, they sign on to an old-fashioned (very old fashioned) whaling ship. The captain, as you'd expect, is a brute and a tyrant. The boys must learn to outwit him. And on the way, they make exciting discoveries and new friends.The story is fast-paced and engaging. As ever, the details about animals and the natural world are fascinating. But even more fascinating are the descriptions of how a whaling ship worked. I found this engrossing as a boy and was glad to discover that it had lost none of its appeal on re-reading, all these years later.If you're worried about encouraging your kids to be mini whaling enthusiasts, don't. The book itself is ambivalent about the practice. But it's also easy to put in context as you're reading. Anyway, what are they going to do, rush out and sign up with Captain Ahab?A great novel for young readers in search of excitement. And Hal and Roger are good role models of positive masculinity: stoic, adventurous and physically brave but also compassionate, fair minded and fascinated to learn about the world around them, from books and by experience.

I used to read Willard Price when I was a boy and recently bought this for my son (8). He loves it and has already re-read it.It follows the tradtional xxx Adventure theme of the two brothers Hal and Roger getting themselves into a sticky situation and finding their way out. In this case they take jobs on an old fashioned whaling ship, it quickly goes wrong and the adventure begins with corporal punishment, sinkings and rescues.

I think this book is a brilliant yet different addition to Willard Price's Adventure series. Unlike a fellow reviewer's (frankly ridiculous) idea that this book is inappropriate for young readers of today I think it is important to see this in its proper context. There are many subjects now deemed unacceptable that should not just be deleted from history. This is a story about a barbaric industry and the horrific conditions in which it was conducted. The particular boat in this story was outdated at the time it was written and the savage brutality of whaling was in no way sugar coated by Price. It's not the most attractive story in the canon but it isn't meant to be. Literature should not be updated every time a subject falls out of favour. Perhaps Moby Dick could be turned into a thrilling whale watching adventure with Captain Ahab searching for the elusive white whale in order to shoot a documentary about it. This book may not be politically correct but it still has some worth while things to say. Our society was built on industries such as this, we may have progressed but we should remember where we came from.

A x-mas present

Absolutely love this series of books when I was young and it didn’t disappoint the next generation!

My 10 year old grandson has been enjoying Willard Price books for at least a year and I expect he'll continue to enjoy his books for at least a couple of more years.