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Willard DeMille Price (28 July 1887 – 14 October 1983) was a Canadian-born American natural historian and author of children's fiction.

Price was born in Peterborough, Ontario, and his family subsequently moved to the United States when he was four. He acquired his MA and Litt.D from Columbia University, before going on to edit the journals Survey and World Outlook. He travelled on many expeditions for the National Geographic Society and the American Museum of Natural History, in particular to Japan. He documented his travels in a series of non-fiction books and also used them as inspiration for his Adventure series of novels for young readers, which depict the exploits of teenage zoologists Hal and Roger Hunt.

Shortly before his death, in 1983, Price commented that:

My aim in writing the Adventure series for young people was to lead them to read by making reading exciting and full of adventure. At the same time I want to inspire an interest in wild animals and their behavior. Judging from the letters I have received from boys and girls around the world, I believe I have helped open to them the worlds of books and natural history.^[1]

Professor Laurie Barber of Waikato University (Hamilton, New Zealand) has presented a case that Willard Price may have been spying for the United States, especially during his Japanese travels in the 1930s.^[2]

Rights sold

During October 2006, the Price family of Holden, Massachussetts, entered into an agreement to sell the copyrights and related legal rights in the 14 adventure series titles (plus the right to use the name WILLARD PRICE) to London-based literary brand owner and investor, Fleming Literary Management LLP (see www.flemingliterary.com ). Fleming Literary is reinvigorating the brand, including through the planned publication of new book # 15 in the series (to be co-written with a new writer but branded with WILLARD PRICE), and the development of television and or film(s) based on the series. Fleming Literary's associated company, Ian Fleming Publications Limited, owns publishing rights to writer Ian Fleming's works including James Bond 007.

Published Works

The "Adventure" Series

• Amazon Adventure (1949)
• South Sea Adventure (1952)
• Underwater Adventure (1954)
• Volcano Adventure (1956)
• Whale Adventure (1960)
• African Adventure (1963)
• Elephant Adventure (1964)
• Safari Adventure (1966)
• Lion Adventure (1967)
• Gorilla Adventure (1969)
• Diving Adventure (1970)
• Cannibal Adventure (1972)
• Tiger Adventure (1979)
• Arctic Adventure (1980)

Adult travel books

• A Real Revolution in China (1914)
• Ancient Peoples at New Tasks (1918, for the Missionary Education Movement)
• The Negro Around the World (1925)
• Rip Tide in the South Seas (1936)
• The South Sea Adventure: Through Japan’s Equatorial Empire (1936, published in the US as Pacific Adventure)
• Japan Reaches Out (1938)
• Japan's New Horizons (1938)
• Children of the Rising Sun (1938)
• Where Are You Going, Japan? (1938)
• Japan Rides the Tiger (1942)
• Japans Islands of Mystery (1944)
• Japan and the Son of Heaven (1945)
• Key to Japan (1946)
• Roving South: Rio Grande to Patagonia (1948)
• I Cannot Rest from Travel: An Autobiography of Adventure in Seventy Lands (1952)
• Journey by Junk: Japan After MacArthur (1953)
• Adventures in Paradise;: Tahiti and Beyond (1955)
• Roaming Britain: 8000 Miles Through England, Scotland and Wales (1958)
• The Amazing Amazon (1954)
• Incredible Africa (1962)
• The Amazing Mississippi (1963)
• Rivers I Have Known (1965)
• America's Paradise Lost (1966)
• Odd Way Round the World (1969)
• The Japanese Miracle and Peril (1971)
• My Own Life of Adventure: Travels in 148 Lands (1982)

References