83. History Smashers Titanic

History Smashers Titanic (History Smashers #4) Kate Messner. Illustrated by Dylan Meconis. 2021. [April] 224 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: Mention The Titanic, and most people think of the disaster at sea. But the truth is, the first victims of the Titanic died while the ship was still being built.

Premise/plot: What you see is what you get. This is a nonfiction book written for young readers (elementary aged) about the Titanic. The first two chapters tell the story of the building and early sails. (The Titanic picked up passengers from several different ports--and also let folks off.) The third chapter tells of the many warnings (four if I counted correctly) that came from other ships sailing in the area of numerous icebergs. Chapters four through seven focus on the disaster itself--hitting the iceberg, the distress calls, the loading of the lifeboats, the sinking, the rescue. Chapters eight through ten focus on the aftermath: the investigations, the changes in policy, the hunt to find the wreck, the current state of Titanic, etc. The book also includes a timeline, an author's note, and bibliography.

My thoughts: The past few generations have been fortunate to have access to great nonfiction. This one has photographs, illustrations, sidebars in comic style, charts and more. I also appreciated ALL the quotes from primary source materials. The narrative style is written in a compelling way.

Depending on if this was your first or your fiftieth book to read about the Titanic, you may or may not encounter information that was new-to-you. But I thought it was packed with information. Some of it familiar. Some of it new-to-me. Granted, I am closer to having just read a handful of books than having read them all. And I've not read any over and over and over again. 

One thing that I personally was not aware of was the ship The Californian. This ship was closest to the Titanic but didn't respond to the distress calls.

The book did challenge my perspectives a bit. Which I think is what it was intended to do. I would definitely recommend this one.

Quotes:

Historians wonder if more lifeboats would have made a big difference. Some argue it wouldn't have, because there simply wouldn't have been time to launch them all. Even with twenty lifeboats, the crew ran out of time to load passengers before the ship went down.

 

© 2021 Becky Laney of Young Readers