William S. and the Great Escape Paperback – December 7, 2010

Every book by Zilpha Keatley Snyder that I have read I have really liked and this one was no exception. Two middle grade siblings pack up their two younger siblings and run away from their abusive father, stepmother and older siblings. They hope to find their dead mother's sister and they do. She takes them in with open arms. Except the abusive father shows up......... Great story, couldn't put it down, cried my eyes out, just loved it.

It was good but I didn't like the ending. It had a great storyline and the author is an AMAZING writer

Very good book very interesting I liked the action and drama. So if you like that this is the perfect book for you.

Great story . Be you a kid or adult you will enjoy it

It is August 1938 and, despite the Great Depression gripping the country, William cannot tell that anything has changed for the Baggett family. His father and stepmother depend on government handouts to feed their large family just like they always have; he still has to avoid attracting the attention of his older half-brothers who delight in tormenting him; and he will never understand how his mother could have ever married "Big Ed," his father, in the first place.William, who is twelve years old, has been planning to run away from the Baggetts for a long time and he hopes to save enough money in the next few months to make that happen. His plans change, though, when his younger sister Jancy suffers a loss at the hands of the older Baggetts and convinces William that now is time for the four youngest Baggetts to make their escape. One morning before daybreak, William, his two younger sisters, and four-year-old Buddy sneak away to walk the five miles to town where they hope to catch a bus to their Aunt's house - some 65 miles up the road.If it were that easy, of course, William S. and his siblings would not have experienced much of a "great escape." Even before they make it to town things get shaky, but the young Baggetts are offered temporary shelter by Clarice, a little girl whose dog discovers them walking down the street. William's biggest problem while hiding out with Clarice's help is how to keep the two youngest Baggett kids from bouncing off the walls from boredom, a predicament he handles by performing Shakespeare's The Tempest for them. William and Jancy, despite the odds against them getting there, are determined to make it to their Aunt and, when they do, they find they may have completed only what will be the first leg of a longer journey."William S. and the Great Escape" will, I think, be enjoyed by children from about 10 to 13 years of age. Children of that age are generally already familiar with classic tales about stepchildren being abused or ignored by parents who favor their own older children, so they should be sympathetic to the plight of the youngest Baggetts. They will also thrill to the dangers and close calls the children face as they try to outwit the adult world. The author, though, in her zeal to promote the works of William Shakespeare to her young audience, may have overdone it to such a degree that some of those young readers resort to skimming whole chapters of the book in order to get back to "the good parts."I passed "William S. and the Great Escape" on to my 10-year-old granddaughter yesterday and I look forward to hearing what she thinks of it. I suspect that, since she is part of the book's target audience, she might see it very differently from the way I did.

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