Escape to the River Sea

Emma Carroll's Escape to the River Sea is an adventure for 11 year olds about a girl who has spent seven years waiting for someone from home to come and fetch her.

What happens

Rosa was three when she said goodbye to her mother and big sister on a rainy station platform in Vienna. She came to England on the Kindertransport and ended up at Westwood, a huge, crumbling country house. Now the war is over and everyone else has gone home. Rosa is still waiting for a letter.

Westwood did have one wonderful thing. When the local zoo was bombed, its animals came to stay, including a jaguar called Opal. Rosa has fed her every morning for years. Then, on the day the zoo comes to take Opal back, Rosa doesn't bolt the stable door properly. Opal is over the fence and gone, and there's talk of guns.

That same day a visitor arrives. Yara is a young scientist on her way home to Brazil, to the Amazon, to look for a giant sloth that everyone thinks died out thousands of years ago. She has a brother and sister at home who are about Rosa's age.

So would Rosa like to come too?

It's so easy to fall for Rosa. She's hopeful and stubborn and a little bit lonely (she chews the end of her plait when she's worried, and she worries a lot). The grown-ups are great fun too. Lady Prue booms "OUTER GARMENTS!" down the hall, and dinner comes with candle wax dripping onto your food.

There's a sad thread running through it, and it's worth being ready for. Rosa's father is Jewish and Austrian, and the adults talk quietly about terrible things that happened in Europe during the war. Nobody knows where her mother is. It's handled gently, but a thoughtful reader will feel the weight of it, and it may lead to some questions at bedtime.

What to read next

If they're ready for another trip up the river, Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson is a classic about a girl who's packed off to the Amazon too, to live near Manaus, back in 1910.