The Runaways

by Ulf Stark, Kitty Crowther (Illustrator)

Overview

The Runaways is an inter-generational adventure filled with warmth and humor from one of the world's great writers for children.

Grandpa hates being in hospital. He thinks only of the place he was happiest—the island where he used to live. He wants to go back, but they won't let him out of the hospital.

So Gottfried Junior, his namesake, helps Grandpa make a plan to run away. They think of everything. Their deception is so complete that when Gottfried Junior finally decides to tell the truth, no one believes him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781776572335
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	7 - 11 Years

About the Author

Ulf Stark (1944-2017) is one of the world's great writers. He is author of more than 30 books for children and has won many prizes for his stellar work. He was shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2018.

Kitty Crowther lives in Belgium. With English and Swedish parents, and born in Brussels, she has written and illustrated over forty books which have been translated into twenty languages and won many awards. In 2010, she received the world's most prestigious prize for children's literature: the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

Editorial Reviews

…The Runaways is flat-out hilarious. And shocking. And weird…The writing is unflashy and deadpan except for when it's unflashy and musical…Crowther's bright, naïve pencil illustrations fit the offbeat text. They're ravishingly ugly…

The New York Times Book Review - Marjorie Ingall

★ 03/11/2019

After Gottfried Junior’s beloved, cantankerous grandfather, a former ship’s engineer, suffers a bad fall, he lands in the hospital. Miserable, he asks his kindred-spirit grandson to help him briefly flee to his house in the Stockholm archipelago, where he has “one or two things to attend to.” With remarkable attention (“you have to think of everything”), the boy sees to all the details—manufacturing an overnight football club trip, garnering meatballs from his mother, and hiring a butcher’s assistant to convey them. The plans go off without a hitch, though it takes Grandfather two hours to walk up the hill to the front door, and he largely refuses to share the final jar of his late wife’s lingonberry jam (“part of her is still in it”). Autumn-hued illustrations by Crowther (Stories of the Night) juxtapose the dull hospital against glorious piney islands and a light-filled sea. Stark straightforwardly conveys family tensions, end-of-life concerns, and intergenerational adoration alongside an archipelago’s worth of vivid details—the removal of paraffin wax from the jam jar, the “wonderful smell of oil” from the ferry’s engine room, potatoes steaming in their pot. Most children’s books about breakouts involve a child abandoning a place; this one follows a man at the end of his life to the home he holds dear. Ages 6–11. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"An unusual adventure story with a core of mutual grandfather-grandson affection."—starred, Booklist

From the Publisher

★ 2019-01-28

A boy helps his ailing grandfather go home one last time in this Swedish import.

Gottfried finds life enlivened by his feisty grandfather, who's always been "difficult." They are true kindred spirits. Confined now to the hospital with a broken leg and weak heart, Grandpa's "worse than ever." Gottfried's dad avoids hospital visits because Grandpa's naughty behavior and declining condition make him "tired and sad." He rejects Gottfried's plea to bring Grandpa to live with them, insisting he's "too sick and angry and stubborn and crazy." Pretending to be at football training, Gottfried visits Grandpa in the hospital and suggests they should run away. Lying to his parents about where he's going overnight, Gottfried surreptitiously transports Grandpa to the island house where he lived with Grandma until she died. Back home for one night, Grandpa happily reverts to his old clothes, savors Grandma's last jar of lingonberry jam, and says farewell to his old life before returning to the hospital. Gottfried's accessible, unadorned, heartfelt first-person narration reveals the depth of his bond with his grandfather as well as his insightful understanding of his father's limitations. Linear, colored-pencil drawings capture key interactions between characters and revel in Grandpa's choler. Characters are white (or, in Grandpa's case, grouchily pink).

A touching, realistic, gently humorous story of how a sensitive boy copes with his treasured grandfather's decline. (Fiction. 8-11)

Kirkus Reviews