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Informationen zum Autor Zilpha Keatley Snyder Klappentext A multiple Newbery Honor-winning author introduces 12-year-old William S. Baggett! a good kid trapped in a really awful family. Encouraged by his sister to run away! William S. takes his two youngest siblings with him. Unfortunately! the trip doesn't go exactly as planned. William S. AND THE GREAT ESCAPE CHAPTER 1 His birth certificate, if he even had one, probably just said Willy Baggett, but for most of the seventh grade he’d been signing his school papers William S. Baggett. William S. Baggett But that, too, would change as soon as he made his move. No more Baggett then—and good riddance. Actually, he’d started thinking about running away almost seven years ago. That was when he’d started going to school and began to learn, among other things, that not everybody behaved like Baggetts. And not very long after that he began putting every penny he could get his hands on into what he thought of as his Getaway Fund. Well, not quite every penny. He did spend a dime, now and then, on a Saturday matinee at the Roxie Theater. Watching how your favorite movie actors could make you believe they were all those different people was one thing he’d never been able to do without. In spite of an occasional movie, his secret stash had grown pretty fast while the Baggetts still lived in the city, where there were lots of lawns to mow and flower gardens to water and weed. And even after they had to get out of town, he’d managed to add a few coins now and then by doing odd jobs at school—carrying stuff for teachers, and mopping up on rainy days for Mr. Jenkins, the janitor. He’d made other plans and preparations too. Besides saving his earnings, he began to keep a long, narrow knapsack beside his bed, and all his most important belongings right there within arm’s reach, ready to push into it. And then, someday, he would take his Getaway Fund out of its supersecret, hard-to-reach hiding place, sling his knapsack over his shoulder, and simply walk away. And that would be that. But what then? Where would he run to? Over the years he’d changed his mind a lot, but just recently he’d come up with some interesting possibilities. Like, how about Hollywood? Or Broadway in New York City? Or even better, Stratford-upon-Avon. Okay, not likely. But, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” Right? He never told anyone, of course. Not even Jancy, at least not until after she’d pretty much guessed. But the little bit Jancy knew didn’t worry him that much. His sister would never do anything to ruin his future career. He was sure of that. Well, he had been sure anyway, until the day her guinea pig got flushed down the toilet, which not only messed up the plumbing, but apparently changed everything. Sweetie Pie had been Jancy’s pet ever since her fourth-grade teacher got tired of a health class experiment that involved feeding some guinea pigs fruits and vegetables, and some others nothing but candy and cookies. Sweetie Pie had been one of the stunted sweet-stuff pigs, and she never quite made it to normal guinea pig size. Not even after Jancy went to the trouble to clear off a stretch of cluttered, weed-grown land to plant a vegetable garden. She did manage to grow a little bit of healthy stuff for Sweetie Pie, and she would have grown a lot more if Gary and the twins hadn’t decided to use her garden plot as one end of their football field. Even though Sweetie Pie never got much bigger, she was, according to Jancy, the smartest, cutest guinea pig that ever lived. But then came the first of August, 1938, and Sweetie Pie’s story came to a sad end. William found out about it soon after it happened, when he overheard t...
