And now, a challenge to Identify This Book!

[seawasp]

As I was posting about Old Soundtracks I Can't Find, I was reminded of this book from my childhood. I have posted the request to help me identify it in MANY locations, and never even gotten so much as a GUESS as to what it was. There are actually TWO books involved, though the first one is the one I'm really curious about:

1) Children/YA adventure book. Set on Hawaii or a very similar volcanic tropical island in the Pacific, this book features (I *think*) four young people who are friends, almost certainly 2 boys and 2 girls. The main adventure they end up on is getting lost in the rainforest on the island and running into a Japanese soldier who is still fighting WWII (I think the date of the book is sometime in the 1960s, cannot be later than the 70s). One of the kids is hurt and so they cannot easily escape at first. Finally, when they DO escape, it's in a jeep or something similar which, in the grand finale, they are driving down an empty lava tube and the volcano begins to erupt, sending lava thundering down the tube. They just barely outrace the lava flow, exiting the tube with only seconds to spare before the flow bursts out.

Any guesses?

2) A collection of stories about people's adventures in underwater settings; my hazy memory claims the title was simply "Underwater!" with a vague image of a diver menaced by a shark. The one story I recall vividly from the book involves a man fishing in a lake (in Arkansas, as I remember) who is attacked by a huge shark; the shark hits the boat, he goes overboard, evades (barely) one pass from the shark, and then on the second pass manages to gut the thing by pushing DOWN off the boat just as it charges and then stabbing upward with his fish knife.

Again, any ideas?

Comments

[aardy.livejournal.com]

I assume you already tried rec.books.childrens? They helped me find the titles of three books I'd been wracking my brain for almost a decade to remember.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

Sorry, rec.ARTS.books.childrens, of course. (And I see you did indeed post there; your post turned up while I was searching.) Someone at libraries might be able to point you to other similar sources of help identifying obscure books; I think there's a separate community for "what book is this" requests, but I'm blanking on the name.

I couldn't turn up anything definitive from home on the first one. (Got a list of about a dozen potentially promising titles, but not one of them really came anywhere close to fitting that description.)

For the second, the most promising thing I turned up was:

Underwater adventure stories / edited by David Thomas. Copyright 1962, but republished several times after that. (Also titled "Teen-age underwater adventure")
CONTENTS: Green is for danger / William M. Stephens -- Treasure deep / Hugh B. Cave -- Swim for life / Newton Rhodes -- Undersea Fisherman / John Scott Douglas -- Hold your breath / D. S. Halacy, Jr. -- Shark Shy / Robert Edmond Alter -- Son of Neptune / Richard M. Elam -- The elusive treasure / William S. Williams -- Lost in the deep / William M. Stephens.

But I couldn't find any cover images, nor a description of any of the stories, so unless that rings a bell, I'd say it more than likely isn't the right one. I also found:

Full forty fathoms : stories of underwater adventure / selected by Phyllis R. Fenner ; illustrated by Michael Eagle. 1975. ISBN: 0688220371

But no contents list, and no available cover image, so that one's much less likely.

If you don't get anything concrete by next week, I'll try to remember to check some of the reference books at the library for finding fiction, and ask around for what sources the librarians there use when they get questions like this.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

One source librarians use is the Project Wombat mailing list: see http://project-wombat.org for details. Available for use by non-librarians.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

I recently founded whatwasthatbook - small community at the moment, but hopefully it will grow!

[shana.livejournal.com]

For the first one I have a vague idea of Madelinee L'Engle... one of her more obscure books.

But since I read it thirty or so years ago, I'm not really sure.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

I passed your request onto one of the public service librarians at work, and she appears to have found Book #2:

Underwater: True Adventures and Incredible Encounters in the Fury of the Sea, Phil Hirsch, editor. New York: Pyramid Books, 1971.

Cover:


There are several copies currently available at abeooks.com.

JACKPOT!

[seawasp]

That is it, no doubt about it; as soon as I saw the cover I recognized it.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

It's a long shot, but here's a possibility my co-worker found for #1:

Volcano Adventure, by Willard Price (orig. published 1956; the cover image below would appear to be from a much later reprint)



That may account for the volcano scenes, and the overall adventure feel, but there's no indication of being stranded on an island rainforest. However, the main characters were stranded on a South Pacific island in another volume in the series, namely South Sea Adventure (1952), so theoretically conflating the two volumes might account for those elements. (New volumes in the series were still being published through the 60's & 70's, and up to 1980, which might explain coming across a reprint in the late 60's/early 70's. A volume published in 1972 was set in the jungles of New Guinea.)

Here's a fan page with more about the series and the author (who apparently also wrote both fiction & nonfiction about Japan, before & after WWII, and thus theoretically might be inclined to include a long-forgotten Japanese soldier as a character).

It's not an obvious definite match, but I wanted to pass along what's turned up so far.

Alas, no.

[seawasp]

Not at all close. My memory of books in that era can be fuzzy, but the things it DOES remember have always been accurate. The book definitely included all the elements I mention, and it's definitely girls and guys. Almost, um, Nancy Drew-ish in the overall feel of the character interactions. But it wasn't a Nancy Drew.

Re: Alas, no.

[(Anonymous)]

Ryk, just chanced across your blog from Schlock Mercenary - love your 'Digital Knight' stuff, BTW.

As soon as you started describing the book, I knew it. It's a Christian book published by Focus on the Family - author Lee Roddy. Josh Ladd is the protagonist, and I grew up with that series.

http://www.tias.com/1761/InventoryPage/1843891/1.html

Search for 'josh ladd' and you'll find the book on that page.

Enjoy,
Jeremy Pope
Decisions Hypnosis
128 North Broad Street
Thomasville, GA 31792
866-885-3733

Re: Alas, no.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the kind words on DK. I'm working on new Jason Wood stories as we speak.

I wish I could say you have a winner, but can't be. The copyright on this book is 1995. I read it first in the very early 1970s and I suspect it was actually published somewhere around 1965. There is also no mention of young ladies as companions to the two young men. In the book I'm looking for, the kids are of dating age and driving age -- or at least close enough that it makes sense they'd be driving a jeep at the critical moments.