Escape From Shangri-La

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A gripping and heartfelt war story from Britain's best-loved children's author, Michael Morpurgo.

Turned away by his own son, Cessie's long-lost grandfather finds himself in the place he fears most - a nursing home called Shangri-La. Only Cessie loves him and is determined to help him escape and unravel the truth of his past. A past that comes to him only in glimpses - a lifeboat, a tin of condensed milk, a terrifying night on the beaches of Dunkirk in World War II ...

Former Children's Laureate and award-winning author of War Horse, Michael Morpurgo, demonstrates why he is considered to be the master story teller with this tale of strife and loss in World War II.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

School Library Journal Review

Gr 5-8-Eleven-year-old Cessie is thrilled when the elderly, rain-soaked tramp staring at her house turns out to be the grandfather she's never known. Her mother also accepts "Popsicle." Her father, who hasn't seen his dad since he was five years old, is less than enthusiastic. However, when the older man has a stroke and can't remember where he lives, Arthur relents and lets him stay with his family while he recuperates. Eventually, Cessie's parents place him in the Shangri-La nursing home. The girl then takes action, finding his home, an old lifeboat named Lucie Alice, and in it a faded photograph of a young French woman and a news clipping from which she learns that the boat had been part of the heroic evacuation of British soldiers from Dunkirk. These items help restore Popsicle's memory and renew his zeal for returning to France to find this woman who had hidden him from the Germans after he was jolted off the lifeboat. Cessie secretly accompanies her grandfather and several other escapees from Shangri-La on an improbable journey across the English Channel. Saddened to learn that the woman hasn't been seen since the Germans arrested her in 1940, Popsicle and his crew head back to England. The family is reunited on the dock and the story ends all neat and tidy. Too neat and tidy, in fact, as are many other contrived plot elements. Aside from Popsicle, the characters lack depth and are fed to readers in such a piecemeal fashion that it is difficult to identify with them and to rejoice at their eventual reunion.-Peggy Morgan, The Library Network, Southgate, MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Gr. 5^-7. A child forms a close and instant bond with a grandfather she never knew she had in this quixotic tale by the author of Wreck of the Zanzibar (1995). Cessie's parents need convincing, but she knows right away that the ponytailed, old boatman who appears at the door is her father's father, out of touch for 50 years. "Popsicle," as he insists on being called, is barely into the house before he suffers a stroke that leaves him with a fragmented memory as well as a tendency to wander off. Despite Cessie's outrage, her parents place him in a nursing home. Morpurgo develops a deep affinity between Cessie and Popsicle, contrasting it with the distance her father, who carries a lifetime's weight of feeling abandoned, keeps--but ultimately, after helping Popsicle and 12 other nursing home residents take an impromptu midnight boat ride across the English Channel, Cessie sees the two reconciled. Readers will enjoy the climactic adventure and respond on a deeper level to the friendship between a spirited child and a lifelong loner just reaching the edge of being able to do for himself. --John Peters

Horn Book Review

Cessie has just begun to know her long-absent grandfather when Popsicle, as he is called, is placed in a nursing home. The eleven-year-old helps Popsicle escape from the nursing home and sail to France to find the woman who saved him when he participated in the evacuation of Dunkirk. The two aspects of the novel--the family story and Popsicle's memories of war--never quite coalesce. From HORN BOOK Spring 1999, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.