The Great Gallipoli Escape by Jackie French
About Jackie French
Jackie French AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014-2015 Australian Children’s Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016 Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children’s literature and her advocacy for youth literacy.
She is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors and writes across all genres. ‘A book can change a child’s life. A book can change the world’ was the primary philosophy behind Jackie’s two-year term as Laureate.
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Quote from Jackie French
“Those who claim you can’t predict the future from the past are possibly scared of the answers, or don’t know enough history. This award celebrates the research to find the stories of the past we never knew, or have forgotten or mythologised, like the ‘vanished’ history of the evacuation of Gallipoli. Turning history into compelling stories shows young people how knowing our past is vital to understanding the problems of the present day, from climatic disasters like flood or bushfire to war or discrimination, and how to face and solve those problems in the future. I am honoured and privileged to be on the longlist.”
About The Great Gallipoli Escape
Sixteen-year-old Nipper and his Gallipoli mates Lanky, Spud, Bluey and Wallaby Joe are starving, freezing and ill-equipped. By November 1915 they know that that there is more to winning a war than courage. The Gallipoli campaign has been lost.
Nipper has played cricket with the Turks in the opposing dugout, dodged rocket fire and rescued desperate and drowning men when the blizzard snow melted. He is one of the few trusted with the secret kept from even most of the officers: how an entire army will vanish from the Peninsula over three impeccably planned nights.
Based on first-hand accounts of those extraordinary last weeks of the Gallipoli campaign, this is the fascinating ‘lost story’ of how 150,000 men – and their horses and equipment – were secretly moved to waiting ships without a single life lost. An unforgettable story told through the eyes of a boy who lied about his age to defend his country.
