Susie Wilde (Children's Literature)
Avi is one of the most popular authors around. That's because he writes an action-packed, cliff-hanging stories that MOVE. The great news for his readers is that this spring he launched a three book series, entitled Beyond the Western Sea beginning with Book One: The Escape from Home. The story starts in 1851, and we follow the lives of three young adults ready to emigrate to America. They include an Irish brother and sister, who are going to join their father. The other major character is a young English lord who is running away from home to escape the cruelty of his brother and the shame of a theft he has committed. All three strong characters find connection and relationship in Liverpool, their port of debarkation. Readers will follow them through a setting that brings alive the period, action that drives the compelling plot, cliff-hangers reminiscent of serials written in the time period of the setting and characters that are downright Dickinsonian. 1996, Orchard, $18.95 and $19.99. Ages 11 up.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, 1996)
From an author who's made a career of experimenting with different narrative structures comes this first sprawling tale in The Escape From Home books; it's done as a Victorian serial novel with a huge cast, and a multiplicity of short chapters setting out an episodic plot replete with chance meetings, narrow escapes, and dismaying revelations. Unable to bear the bullying of his older brother, Albert, Laurence Kirkle, 11, pockets a thousand pounds of his father's cash and runs into the London streets; meanwhile, two of Lord Kirkle's Irish tenants--Patrick, 12, and his older sister, Maura--flee their famine-struck village, intending to join their father in the US. The three quickly fall prey to the hazards of street life as they make their separate ways toward Liverpool, the great embarkation point. The supporting cast, urchins, rowdies, and entrepreneurs with names like Phineas Pickler and Toby Grout will be familiar to fans of Dickens and his literary descendants--and several characters are developed beyond the expected caricatures--but the melodrama is mild, and the ending is hardly the spectacular cliffhanger required of the genre. Many plot threads are left a-dangle; Avi (Poppy, 1995, etc.) promises a sequel but few readers will be chewing their nails waiting for it. 1996, Orchard, $18.95; PLB $19.99. © 1996 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Roger Sutton (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, February 1996 (Vol. 49, No. 6))
While you actually do have to turn the pages for yourself here, the task soon feels like it's out of your hands as Avi's tense, twisting storytelling takes over. It is 1851, and brother and sister Patrick and Maura are escaping poverty and the landlord's destruction of their wretched Irish hovel; Laurence, son to an English lord, is running away from abuse and his own guilty conscience. All three young people are-hope to be-on their way to America, with trouble and intrigue pursuing them every step of the way. Although the book has the harum-scarum action of melodrama, it never becomes pastiche; instead, Maura, Patrick, and Laurence seem like real people in really dangerous straits as various villains, for various and conflicting reasons, try to keep them from boarding the Robert Peel, set to sail on Friday, January 24. (The book essentially begins on the Monday of the same week, so you can see that things move thick and fast.) The suspense and the shifting among various points of view are expertly deployed but do become slightly mechanical towards the last pages; you still won't be able to stop reading. More of a problem is the cliff-hanging ending: the three kids are all on the boat but they're still up to their necks in it, and you feel like you've only read half a book. Which you have-and the next installment, Lord Kirkle's Money, won't be published until the fall. Libraries may want to wait and purchase both volumes at once. R--Recommended. Reviewed from galleys (c) Copyright 1996, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1996, Jackson/Orchard, [304p], $19.99 and $18.95. Grades 5-8.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, 1996)
This adventure begins in Ireland during the potato famine and follows Maura and Patrick O'Connell's journey to America after their parents' cottage is destroyed by their greedy landlord. Their paths intersect with that of Laurence Kirkle, who is also running away to the land of opportunity. Shifting back and forth between converging stories, the narrative, with its short, snappy chapters and unremitting suspense, is a real page-turner. Category: Fiction. 1996, Watts, 296pp.. Ages 9 to 12. Rating: 2: Superior, well above average.