Unaware that she holds a terrifying secret within her, fifteen-year-old Kira agrees, at a sleepover, to let her friends hypnotize her. Hoping to hear her secret crush, her friends instead hear a child's buried memory of fleeing from danger with her mother and Kira speaking a language none of them understands.
When Kira confronts her eccentric, quiet mother with questions about her revelation, she becomes frightened. Kira, with the help of her best friend Lynne, set out to find the answers to Kira's questions.
Before any of these questions can be answered, a woman who calls herself Aunt Memory appears, claiming that the women Kira thinks of as her mother has been kidnapped and that only Kira can save her.
Aunt Memory kidnaps Kira and transports her to an old-world county, called Crythe, hidden within California. Kira finds herself imprisoned with the women she always believed was her mother, and her best friend, who stowaway on the plane. It is in Crythe that Kira finds out she is a special child, the daughter of two brilliant Crythians. Kira discovers that her parents stored important data in her memory, which could only be discovered through hypnosis. In order to save herself, her best friend, and her mother, Kira must unlock the memories hidden deep inside her. Kira is faced with the difficult decision of whether to unlock those memories, which she has been told could harm her own memories, or try to save her family and friends on her own. The plot moves at such a rapid pace that only at the end of the story does the reader have time to contemplate the unresolved questions concerning the power and role of memories in our lives.
While a thrilling mystery and tale of friendship, the book ends, leaving one main plot unresolved. This was frustrating to me, but my teenage daughter thought the ending was perfect.
I would recommend this book for grades 6 and up, as the intricate plot may be hard for younger children to follow.
Escape from Memory was the winner of the 2004 Golden Duck Award (the Golden Ducks honor excellence in children's science fiction literature) for the Eleanor Cameron Award for Middle Grades.
This book has also been nominated for the 2004 Teen's Top Ten list. The 2004 Top Ten list will be selected during Teen Read Week, October 18-24, 2004.
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