King School Library: Remembering the Titanic

On April 15, 2012, we celebrate (or mourn, rather) the 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Here are a few new books to the King School Library about this "unsinkable" ship:

The Titanic Disaster by Peter Benoit (Children's Press, 2011) --- I read this book aloud to a third grade class today to familiarize them with the Titanic tragedy. Many have heard of the movie because it is being re-released into theaters, so we also talked a little about how the movie is fictionalized.
This book does a nice job of giving the bare facts of the journey, while still providing fun tidbits in the photos and illustrations. This is a great book to use when teaching nonfiction text features because it has everything you could ever want - captions, titles, headings, subheadings, diagrams, bold words, etc. Much of the "interesting" information we learned was found in the captions, actually.

Remembering the Titanic by Frieda Wishinsky (Scholastic, 2012) --- I bought this one at the Scholastic book fair a couple months ago. From the publisher: On April 10, 1912, the TITANIC set sail. On April 15, 1912, the great ship sank. This simple reader tells the story of the TITANIC for the 100th anniversary of its tragic voyage. Find out what life was like aboard the ship and meet some of the passengers and the crew. Read about Robert Ballard's triumphant discovery of the wreck 73 years later and what's been discovered since.

Titanic Sinks! by Barry Denenberg (Viking, 2011) --- This book is luscious. It's a blend of fact and fiction in the way that it's formatted - magazine and newspaper clippings take you through the sinking of the Titanic. I haven't been able to spend much time looking at this book because it was checked out by a teacher as soon as I got it out of the box! This book is definitely for older readers who are able to sift through the material and determine what's true and what's not. It received four starred reviews (Kirkus, Booklist, Publisher's Weekly, School Library Journal), so this was a no-brainer purchase. :) Check out Denenberg's website for more info - http://barrydenenberg.com/pw_titanic_sinks.php.

All Stations! Distress! by Don Brown (Roaring Book Press, 2010) --- This is actually my favorite of the four because I prefer narrative nonfiction. I read this aloud to 5th grade earlier in the year, and they were captivated. They wanted to know more! This was an easy read-aloud in that it read very much like a story, even though it was all true. We looked at the back matter to see all the research Don Brown did for this book, and we talked about how the quotations in the book were the real words of the survivors of the ship. We really enjoyed this book!

For more books about the Titanic, both fiction & nonfiction, search the King School catalog using the keyword Titanic.