Grandpa's Great Escape

Narrator David Walliams and cohorts Nitin Ganatra and Michael Gambon are captivating as they bring all the characters in this audiobook to life. The narrating trio chattily provides the background and details of the book's main characters. Twelve-year-old Jack is devoted to his grandfather, a WWII pilot. Jack's parents agonize about keeping Grandfather safe at home. And the vicar crafts his own plan to keep Grandpa safe. The story takes off when Walliams, Ganatra, and Gambon slip into the character voices of a caring grandson; his exasperated mother; a bargain-hunting shopkeeper; a melodramatic vicar and his henchmen; and ever-optimistic Grandpa, with his spot-on RAF voice. Listeners will travel the skies over Britain with Wing Commander Arthur Bunting and his adoring grandson. A.R. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

November 28, 2016
It’s 1983, but Jack’s grandfather, whose memory is failing, believes that the year is 1940, when he was a decorated RAF pilot serving in WWII. Unlike his worried parents, 12-year-old Jack views the workings of Grandpa’s mind as “nothing short of magical,” is spellbound by the man’s wartime tales, and eagerly plays “Squadron Leader” to Grandpa’s “Wing Commander” as they outwit enemy aircraft from their armchair cockpits. Knowing that “You had to enter Grandpa’s world to get through to him,” Jack uses military lingo to talk his grandfather down from a church spire, remove him from a museum’s fighter plane, and help him escape the nightmarish Twilight Towers home for the elderly (motto: “Caring for your unwanted old folk”). Ross’s energetic drawings and some playful use of typography bring additional drama and humor to the story. As in Walliams’s Demon Dentist, the adult characters are of the bumbling sort—such as Miss Swine, the diabolical matron of Twilight Towers, and a pair of detectives, Beef and Bone—and the story’s comedy is nicely counterbalanced by the poignant bond between Jack and Grandpa. Ages 8–12.