One hundred years ago, the White Star Line launched its second of three planned luxury ocean liners: the infamous Titanic. You might be planning to commemorate the anniversary by taking a trip to the movies to cry over Jack and Rose again, now that James Cameron has re-released his popular movie in 3D. (In which case, I’ll be right behind you!)
However, there are also lots of great books about the Titanic disaster here at the West Chester Public Library, as well as the other libraries in Chester County. Here are just a few recommendations:
For Kids
1. Voyage on the Great Titanic (Ellen Emerson White)
This book is part of the popular Dear America series, which recreates history through the diary entries of fictional girls. Voyage on the Great Titanic tells the story of Margaret Ann Brady, a young girl who is hired to travel as a companion to a first class passenger on the ship. The diary entries convey the excitement and joy of the passengers on the first days of the voyage, only to descend into heartbreak after the ship hits the iceberg. Overall, it’s a very good piece of historical fiction for older children.
2. Can You Survive the Titanic? (Allison Lassieur)
Written in the style of the Choose Your Own Adventure series, Can You Survive the Titanic? allows you to pick between three different characters aboard the Titanic, jumping right to the moment when the ship hits the berg and presenting the reader with survival choices from that point onwards. Much like the real disaster, even the reader’s smallest decisions can have an impact on whether one “lives” or “dies,” and how many of the characters’ friends and family are saved. Also, because the three characters are so different, this book offers many opportunities to reread and make different choices than the first time reading through it.
3. Titanic (Mary Pope Osborne)
Your children may have already read about Jack and Annie’s adventures in Tonight on the Titanic, but Mary Pope Osborne also wrote an excellent nonfiction book about the disaster as part of the companion series to her Magic Treehouse stories. There are lots of interesting pictures, fun facts provided by Jack and Annie, and a list of additional books for children interested in doing research like Jack.
For Adults
1. Titanic’s Last Secrets (Brad Matsen)
I cannot recommend this book enough. When I started reading it, I wasn’t sure if it would really live up to its promise to tell “something new” about a ship that sank a hundred years ago. But I was very, very wrong. It starts out slowly enough, with a team of deep-sea divers hoping to uncover why the huge ship sank so quickly, and gradually reveals what they discovered about the construction of Titanic. We already know that lives could have been spared if the ship had avoided the iceberg or other ships responded to Titanic’s distress call besides the Carpathia. But this team asks an even more unsettling question: why didn’t Titanic stay afloat long enough for Carpathia to arrive?
The History Channel also released a DVD documentary of the team that found new evidence for why Titanic sank, entitled Titanic’s Final Moments: Missing Pieces. This is also worth checking out.
2. The Story of Titanic as Told by its Survivors (Lawrence Beesley, Col. Archibald Gracie, Commander Lightoller, Harold Bride)
Sometimes, the best way to understand a historical event is to read about it through the eyes of the people that actually experienced it. This book provides not only one account, but four, from a second-class passenger who was lucky enough to escape the ship early with some other men and women, to the assistant radio operator, Harold Bride. Each man has his own story to tell, some starting before the ship set sail and others starting with the day of the disaster, but they are all very interesting.
3. James Cameron’s Titanic (Ed W. Marsh)
For fans of the blockbuster movie, this is a must-read account of how James Cameron and his crew filmed Titanic. It contains absolutely gorgeous photos of the wreck itself, the building of the set, and filming with the cast, as well as a foreword by the director about how he came to develop the idea for the movie. Whether you’re planning to see the movie again or not, it’s fascinating to learn about just how much effort went into faithfully replicating the Titanic and re-telling the story to audiences eighty-five years after the disaster occurred.