WILLIAM S. AND THE GREAT ESCAPE
by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster
Hardcover: 9781416967637
Paperback: 9781416967644
Ages 8-12
224 pages
William S. Baggett is just about ready to ditch his last name --- and the family that goes with it. The Baggetts are a bunch of lazy, quarreling lowlifes, the kind of big half-brothers and sisters that will beat up a little kid just for the heck of it. For William, though, his dreams of running away from his horrible family have been just that --- dreams, the kind of thing you wish for and maybe even save for, but that remains firmly in the “someday” category.
That is, until William’s younger sister Jancy, fed up with her older siblings’ bullying and bad behavior (they flush her guinea pig down the toilet for a joke) and with the overall chaos in their dilapidated farmhouse, begs William to leave soon --- and to take Jancy and their younger siblings, Trixie and Buddy, with him. The plan? To find their Aunt Fiona, their late mother’s sister who lives in northern California.
William and Jancy’s plans are full of potential pitfalls. Just getting out of their small California town without getting caught provides plenty of challenges. They find an unlikely ally in the person of Clarice, a rich family’s daughter who recognizes William from his role as the sprite Ariel in a high school production of The Tempest by William Shakespeare. Clarice's admiration of William provides plenty of opportunities for good-natured teasing by Jancy, but it also might be their ticket out of town.
None of the Baggetts knew about William’s star turn; he doesn’t even want to imagine “what might have happened if any of the older Baggetts had shown up to watch a member of their family come onstage dressed in tights and a filmy tunic and sing things like ‘Full fathom five thy father lies, Of his bones are coral made,’ while he bounded around the stage waving a wand that made all sorts of magical things seem to be happening.” But Clarice was impressed with William’s performance, and even though at times she proves as much of a hindrance as a help to William and his younger siblings’ escape plans, she just might be the key to helping them find a real home.
Along the way, William gets to (or, sometimes, has to) act out scenes from Shakespeare. Although the lines from Shakespeare and the references to his plays are printed in a distractedly old-fashioned typeface, the integration of William’s genuine love of Shakespeare into the plot might help the Bard seem less intimidating and more relevant to kids’ own lives. Most entertaining, however, is just watching these enterprising siblings find a way out of a serious dilemma, navigating their Depression-era obstacles with pluck and creativity, and traveling to an ending where, in true Shakespearean style, “all’s well that ends well.” WILLIAM S. AND THE GREAT ESCAPE is an engaging novel of journeys and homecomings, one that might prompt readers not to run away but to find a way to express their true selves, wherever they are.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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