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Escape From #3
Escape from Stalingrad
From the author of Escape from Chernobyl comes another fast-paced historical thriller about a city caught between an enemy army and their own brutal government. Artem lives in the sleepy city of Stalingrad, which has mostly been cut off from war with Nazi Germany―until the summer of 1942. That July, martial law is declared as the Nazis begin their unprecedented march toward the city. Artem’s older brother is a soldier in Stalin’s Red Army, so Artem is worried for his brother’s safety once he and his family have evacuated the city. Then the announcement comes. Stalin has ordered that no civilians be allowed to leave Stalingrad. The city which bears his name is an important symbol, and the Red Army believe that the soldiers defending it will fight all the harder if their families’ lives are at stake. Artem and his new friend Yuna are put to work shoring up the city’s defenses, digging trenches and building fortifications. Then, on August 23rd, the bombing begins. A massive German air raid reduces most of the city to rubble. With Stalingrad blockaded by both the Germans and their own government, escape from the coming battle seems all but impossible…
176 pages, Paperback
Published September 5, 2023
26 people are currently reading
202 people want to read
About the author
Andy Marino
31 books253 followersAndy Marino was born in upstate New York, spent half his life in New York City, and now lives in the Hudson Valley. He is the author of seven novels for young readers, most recently THE PLOT TO KILL HITLER trilogy.
THE SEVEN VISITATIONS OF SYDNEY BURGESS is his first novel for adults.
THE SEVEN VISITATIONS OF SYDNEY BURGESS is his first novel for adults.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
November 29, 2024
3.5 Stars
May 10, 2025
Content warnings: war, death, gun violence, bombings, death of a parent (in the past), antisemitism, explosions
3.5 stars
Did I read this solely because it's set (unsurprisingly) in Stalingrad and I wanted to colour in Russia on my reading map for 2025? Maybe. It's...an odd story. Like, it's not BAD. But I definitely felt like the story was kind of rushed and I constantly felt like I had no investment in any of the characters. The first half dragged, the rest was extremely fast paced, but the ending needed more for me. In summary: a good introduction to life in Stalingrad during the German invasion, but also kind of eh.
3.5 stars
Did I read this solely because it's set (unsurprisingly) in Stalingrad and I wanted to colour in Russia on my reading map for 2025? Maybe. It's...an odd story. Like, it's not BAD. But I definitely felt like the story was kind of rushed and I constantly felt like I had no investment in any of the characters. The first half dragged, the rest was extremely fast paced, but the ending needed more for me. In summary: a good introduction to life in Stalingrad during the German invasion, but also kind of eh.
July 9, 2024
I read this book to my son who is fascinated with WWII history. This historical fiction book was better than the previous book we read by this author. The author describes conditions in the Soviet Union during WWII & the battle of Stalingrad. It also portrays the autocratic rule that communist authorities used to frighten people to do things they didn’t want to do. The author did a fantastic job describing how citizens survived in a war torn city but particularly how war changes everything. I liked this book more than Escape from Chernobyl. Perhaps if more students read books that described communism and socialism accurately, less students would be influenced by liberalist agendas in higher education.
May 30, 2023
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Artem's family has had a difficult time. When he was very young, his father was sent away to Siberia, and his mother has had to raise him and his brother Visily by herself in Stalingrad. Artem is very interested in animals and birds, and hopes to one day be a vet. In 1942, things get worse. Vasily is called up to fight for the Red Army at the same time that the entire family recieves orders to work in construction, and the bureaucracy is not set up to take into account that the brother is in the army. They manage to escape punishment, but work is punishing enough. A young girl, Yuna, befriends Artem's mother, who tells her not to talk to Artem and to distract him, since he daydreams about animals he sees enough. It turns out that Yuna is not only an orphan, but she is Jewish as well. When the Germans attack Stalingrad, Artem's mother is badly injured. Holed up and trying to survive, Artem bargains with a sympathetic German officer for food and medical equipment. For a while, he and Yuna fill German canteens with water, but Yuna is captured by the Germans. Artem is offered even more perks if he will throw a grenade at a supply boat, but he doesn't want to. While Artem has been trying to take care of his mother, he feels that he can't leave Yuna as a prisoner. With the help of a local black marketeer who knew his father, Artem manages to bargain canned goods for her transport out of Stalingrad. He also manages to get into the German camp and escape with Yuna after setting a fire. As the battle rages on, Artem works protecting a factory by looking out for planes, but when an officer lets him know that he is worth more to the Russians dead than alive, he realizes that he and Yuna must also escape and try to find his mother. Will they be able to make it out of the devastation?
Strengths: Like this author's Escape from Chernobyl and The Plot to Kill Hitler, Escape from Stalingrad is a well-researched, swiftly moving snapshot of a particular and horrible moment in history. Artem's interest in animals gives a good grounding in life before the war, but a telling scene where he expxlains to an officer that his interest in animals is really for the good of the motherland shows clearly how internalized the oppression he lived under was. There's a good note by Marino about the source works he consulted in order to write this, and some of my really avid readers might hunt down those titles. Yuna's Jewish background is clearly an issue, but I enjoyed the fact that it didn't really matter to Artem or his mother, and that the three of them came together as a family once they escaped. Given the vast devastation of the war, I imagine that there were many, many makeshift families. The details about the housing and food situation will appeal to readers who like the survival aspect of war stories, but there are enough details of shelling and sniping to appeal to those who prefer combat scenes. What I liked best was the great description of a young person who ended up in an impossible situation and tried desperately to make the best of it. The really brilliant part is that neither the Russians nor the Germans came across as completely evil. There were characters from both backgrounds who were more or less evil depending on their circumstances, and this seems to me to be very true to life. Hand this to readers who have read all of Tarshis' I Survived books and are looking for something with a bit more depth.
Weaknesses: Scholastic has a bad habit of issuing all of the titles that I really like and would be wildly popular in my library in paperback. I get it. Publishing is about making money. But are there no lovers of sports books, war books, and romances that would buy these in hardcover? And do that many people buy hugely long fantasy series in that format? It seems like I am always needing new WWII books, but a prebind will hold up maybe ten years. Then, no matter what the binding is like, the pages turn to dust.
What I really think: I will definitely be purchasing a prebind copy, and hope that Marino will continue to find aspects of young people dealing with different disasters to write about. I love to give these to children who complain about things like not being allowed to use their cell phones in the hallways! Perspective can be a sobering thing.
Artem's family has had a difficult time. When he was very young, his father was sent away to Siberia, and his mother has had to raise him and his brother Visily by herself in Stalingrad. Artem is very interested in animals and birds, and hopes to one day be a vet. In 1942, things get worse. Vasily is called up to fight for the Red Army at the same time that the entire family recieves orders to work in construction, and the bureaucracy is not set up to take into account that the brother is in the army. They manage to escape punishment, but work is punishing enough. A young girl, Yuna, befriends Artem's mother, who tells her not to talk to Artem and to distract him, since he daydreams about animals he sees enough. It turns out that Yuna is not only an orphan, but she is Jewish as well. When the Germans attack Stalingrad, Artem's mother is badly injured. Holed up and trying to survive, Artem bargains with a sympathetic German officer for food and medical equipment. For a while, he and Yuna fill German canteens with water, but Yuna is captured by the Germans. Artem is offered even more perks if he will throw a grenade at a supply boat, but he doesn't want to. While Artem has been trying to take care of his mother, he feels that he can't leave Yuna as a prisoner. With the help of a local black marketeer who knew his father, Artem manages to bargain canned goods for her transport out of Stalingrad. He also manages to get into the German camp and escape with Yuna after setting a fire. As the battle rages on, Artem works protecting a factory by looking out for planes, but when an officer lets him know that he is worth more to the Russians dead than alive, he realizes that he and Yuna must also escape and try to find his mother. Will they be able to make it out of the devastation?
Strengths: Like this author's Escape from Chernobyl and The Plot to Kill Hitler, Escape from Stalingrad is a well-researched, swiftly moving snapshot of a particular and horrible moment in history. Artem's interest in animals gives a good grounding in life before the war, but a telling scene where he expxlains to an officer that his interest in animals is really for the good of the motherland shows clearly how internalized the oppression he lived under was. There's a good note by Marino about the source works he consulted in order to write this, and some of my really avid readers might hunt down those titles. Yuna's Jewish background is clearly an issue, but I enjoyed the fact that it didn't really matter to Artem or his mother, and that the three of them came together as a family once they escaped. Given the vast devastation of the war, I imagine that there were many, many makeshift families. The details about the housing and food situation will appeal to readers who like the survival aspect of war stories, but there are enough details of shelling and sniping to appeal to those who prefer combat scenes. What I liked best was the great description of a young person who ended up in an impossible situation and tried desperately to make the best of it. The really brilliant part is that neither the Russians nor the Germans came across as completely evil. There were characters from both backgrounds who were more or less evil depending on their circumstances, and this seems to me to be very true to life. Hand this to readers who have read all of Tarshis' I Survived books and are looking for something with a bit more depth.
Weaknesses: Scholastic has a bad habit of issuing all of the titles that I really like and would be wildly popular in my library in paperback. I get it. Publishing is about making money. But are there no lovers of sports books, war books, and romances that would buy these in hardcover? And do that many people buy hugely long fantasy series in that format? It seems like I am always needing new WWII books, but a prebind will hold up maybe ten years. Then, no matter what the binding is like, the pages turn to dust.
What I really think: I will definitely be purchasing a prebind copy, and hope that Marino will continue to find aspects of young people dealing with different disasters to write about. I love to give these to children who complain about things like not being allowed to use their cell phones in the hallways! Perspective can be a sobering thing.
June 22, 2025
This entire review will contain spoilers.
*The characters lack development we can see. We're told about changes rather than seeing them develop gradually over time.
*The author skips weeks and months at a time. This leads to a disjointed narrative. Instead of skipping them, he could have used them to show our characters growing and developing.
*A Jewish girl is added to the family, then Artem learns she's Jewish and is aware of the Germans hatred of the Jews. There are "rumors" of the Jews being sent straight to death. I'm sorry, the odds of a Russian boy hearing whispers of the Final Solution seem scant at best. Not every book about WWII should include references to The Holocaust.
*The timing seemed way off, but this could also be because so much time was skipped.
*Artem's brother returns, murders a Russian officer, and disappears again. He's shell shocked and changed from his experiences, but that makes his actions even more out of place. Why would he murder a Russian officer to rescue a brother he says he doesn't love? The author notes in the back that the life expectancy of a Russian on the front was 24 hours. You're telling me this boy with no experience lived four months? I don't buy it.
I read many books at a time. When my husband and I went on vacation for a few days, I grabbed this and two others, hoping to finish it. It was only after we got there that I realized I grabbed three juvenile historical adventures, written in different decades. 1) We Were There with the California Rancheros 2) George Washington's Socks and 3) Escape From Stalingrad. I was able to compare the three books, covering three different events, and written in 3 decades: 1950s (publication year 1960) 1980s (publication year 1992) and 2020s (publication year 2023). To say that the reading quality has diminished is an understatement. There's no comparison. It's a shame that books today aren't being written with the care put into books of previous generations. The type of words used has decreased drastically. I strongly encourage everyone to seek out older books when desiring to learn about history.
*The characters lack development we can see. We're told about changes rather than seeing them develop gradually over time.
*The author skips weeks and months at a time. This leads to a disjointed narrative. Instead of skipping them, he could have used them to show our characters growing and developing.
*A Jewish girl is added to the family, then Artem learns she's Jewish and is aware of the Germans hatred of the Jews. There are "rumors" of the Jews being sent straight to death. I'm sorry, the odds of a Russian boy hearing whispers of the Final Solution seem scant at best. Not every book about WWII should include references to The Holocaust.
*The timing seemed way off, but this could also be because so much time was skipped.
*Artem's brother returns, murders a Russian officer, and disappears again. He's shell shocked and changed from his experiences, but that makes his actions even more out of place. Why would he murder a Russian officer to rescue a brother he says he doesn't love? The author notes in the back that the life expectancy of a Russian on the front was 24 hours. You're telling me this boy with no experience lived four months? I don't buy it.
I read many books at a time. When my husband and I went on vacation for a few days, I grabbed this and two others, hoping to finish it. It was only after we got there that I realized I grabbed three juvenile historical adventures, written in different decades. 1) We Were There with the California Rancheros 2) George Washington's Socks and 3) Escape From Stalingrad. I was able to compare the three books, covering three different events, and written in 3 decades: 1950s (publication year 1960) 1980s (publication year 1992) and 2020s (publication year 2023). To say that the reading quality has diminished is an understatement. There's no comparison. It's a shame that books today aren't being written with the care put into books of previous generations. The type of words used has decreased drastically. I strongly encourage everyone to seek out older books when desiring to learn about history.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 29, 2023
Capturing the experience of young men (and women) who were sent to the front lines in any war is a balance for a younger audience of giving enough background/context for the history while also creating a plot that intrigues the reader be it in the setting, character development, or pacing.
Marino has a series in which it is about the escape from some harrowing event and this one is not different, set in the battle city of Stalingrad against the Germans. Artem is the featured character and I didn't get enough introduction to him before being thrown into the story that I wasn't as engaged in him as I was experiencing what was happening to and around him. The setting/story was the more important element that I read for a younger audience that might not understand Russian conflict, though in 2023, they might recognize Russia as a country more than maybe 10 or 20 years ago.
It's on the shorter side of historical fiction, but captures the plight of the soldier- and Marino's opening line of the author's note reiterates the deadly game that was being played.
Marino has a series in which it is about the escape from some harrowing event and this one is not different, set in the battle city of Stalingrad against the Germans. Artem is the featured character and I didn't get enough introduction to him before being thrown into the story that I wasn't as engaged in him as I was experiencing what was happening to and around him. The setting/story was the more important element that I read for a younger audience that might not understand Russian conflict, though in 2023, they might recognize Russia as a country more than maybe 10 or 20 years ago.
It's on the shorter side of historical fiction, but captures the plight of the soldier- and Marino's opening line of the author's note reiterates the deadly game that was being played.
October 13, 2025
Appropriate young adult read about Stalingrad during WWII. A few scenes are a bit ridiculous as in Artem trying to infiltrate the German premises to save Yuna....but overall you feel the desperation of the time living in the midst of a war - in the destruction, with starvation looming and lack of anyone coming to rescue you. I interact with Holocaust survivors that lived through the Battle of Stalingrad or who are from that area and these books make me relate to what they might have been through and can not share. I look forward to other "escape" books as they introduce young adults to very important historical events that need to be remembered.
February 3, 2024
It was really good and this is one of my favorite historical fiction books! The ending is kinda blurry cuz we dont know what actually happened to Vasily. We saw him later but we didnt see him at the end, and for all we know he could be dead. Anyway... this was great but it left me with a lot of questions.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 14, 2024
I like historical fiction books as they present an important piece of history in an entertaining way that holds one's attention. This author does a wonderful job with historical fiction and the story of the civilians who survived during the horrible battle of Stalingrad during WWII. He did good research, stayed true to the facts, and his "Author's Note" brings it all together.
April 19, 2025
The battle of Stalingrad from the point of view of a 12 year old boy caught in the middle of it. This is a book aimed at middle school readers, and does a good job of introducing a dark time in history and keeping it fairly accurate without going too dark for the intended audience.
It took me a couple chapters to get into, but once I did I enjoyed it.
It took me a couple chapters to get into, but once I did I enjoyed it.
May 29, 2024
This was a good book! It was interesting, as it was from a Soviet/Russian perspective (Most WWII books I've read are from a Polish or Jewish perspective) Anyways, It was a good book, definitely recommend. I will be reading more of this authors books.
August 16, 2024
Not as good as the one about Chernobyl. I don’t know much about the attacks on Stalingrad, so it’s hard for me to judge the information presented about the battle. The plot was okay as it did not pull me in like the other one. Glad I read it and look forward to the other 2.
May 9, 2025
Artem, a teenager, tries to get his family out of Stalingrad when the Germans attack. He and friend Yuna work sometimes discreetly with the German military to stay alive, and struggle to save his sick mother and his brother, who is in the Russian army.
October 25, 2025
This was a good story about the wara between Germany (Hitler) and the Soviet Union (Stalin) specifically in the city of Stalingrad. This book is about a boy named Artem and his family and a friend named Luna.
October 29, 2025
Maybe 3.5 stars. It’s a YA book about a 12 year old in Stalingrad during WW2. Apparently 10,000 civilians lived and survived in Stalingrad during the battle. Interesting story probably some truths in it.
September 9, 2023
Thank you Comrade Marino of the pain of war and inner paths we must learn to tread In thouse difficult times.
October 10, 2023
This was a very good book with lots of action.
October 24, 2023
Another great young person book by Andy Marino. Even though this is a historical fiction book, it will give our young people a great insight into the siege of Stalingrad.
March 16, 2024
I liked the book decently. Not the best but not the worst. It was tedious but short. I prefer Alan Gratz. But good overall
August 6, 2024
Classroom library.
January 8, 2025
I love historical fiction books. This wasn't my favorite, but it wasn't awful either. A quick read. Good for a younger person.
May 27, 2025
Heavy read aloud for an 11 year old who is really into WWII historical fiction.
December 29, 2025
very good
March 21, 2025
Very good book to read, I recommend reading the other ones as well. Escape from East Berlin, and Escape from Chernobyl. All these books are published by Andy Marino. 9/10 for my rating.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews