Escape from Warsaw
by Ian Serraillier

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Middle grade historical fiction

I thought this book might be a sort of introduction to fiction set during WWII and the Holocaust for my daughter, since these are subjects I’ve been very interested in since I was a teenager. However, while the book isn’t bad, it’s very shallow overall. Most of the story takes place after the war has ended, jumping forward 2 years from when the children’s mother is arrested early in the book. And the title implies that the children struggle to escape their home city, but the story is more of a journey across a war-torn landscape, through multiple countries from Poland to Switzerland, where they’re sure their dad is waiting. It’s a story of survival and relying on the kindness of strangers, of family helping each other at all costs, and of children who are displaced by the war. It’s almost a series of vignettes, which makes sense, since the author used real accounts of things that happened to people around this time period, piecing them together into a mostly cohesive story of one family trying to reunite. However, at 13, I would say my daughter is already too old for this book, though I can see it being a decent one for younger kids. As a side note, apparently the book was originally published under the title The Silver Sword, which I think was a much more apt name for the story (especially considering that the actual escape from Warsaw was quick and not super difficult).

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