Escape Plans

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Escape Plans is a volume in the In the Same Boat series which, according
to the preface, is intended to provide children who share the same
backgrounds as the authors with “stories in which they can recognize
themselves and the way they live” as well as “offer all children
insights into these diverse cultures.”

Set in Toronto in 1962, the book features Becky Makowiecki, 12, whose
parents, both Polish Jews, escaped the Holocaust. While Becky’s mother
shares portions of her story about the war years, Becky’s father
adamantly refuses to discuss this period. Initially, Becky’s biggest
concern is that Linda, her best friend, is being teased about her
reading problems; however, that worry becomes overshadowed when the
school makes the Cold War a curriculum focus. The October Cuban Missile
Crisis fuels Becky’s anxiety, and she and Linda decide that the only
solution is to secretly build family fallout shelters. When Becky’s
father discovers what she has done, he becomes angry and strikes her.
Only after Becky runs away from home and then accidentally, and
unbelievably, encounters her mother does she learn the war-rooted source
of her father’s anger.

Few middle-school readers will stay with the story until the end for it
attempts to do too much, including having the mother periodically drop
in disjointed bits of her personal history and Becky worry about the
Cold War’s threat of nuclear war, the latter something with which
today’s more terrorist-sensitive readers will likely not identify.
Becky is, in the main, a most boring adolescent although the delightful
episode involving Becky’s and Linda’s stocking and then attempting
to dig fallout shelters in their families’ garages demonstrates that
Posesorski has the potential for developing real characters. Not
recommended.