Blog Post #6: I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic,1912

I have been in a reading slump lately. After hearing that John Green came out with a new book, that is the only thing I have been wanting to read and I have had no time to go out and get my hands on one. So after some time off of reading for our challenge, I dug through my bag of children's book and I couldn't find one that I wanted to read. I asked my mom if she had packed away any of our children book and she did! She got them out for me and this was one of the first ones I saw. I instantly was intrigued. I LOVED watching documentaries about the Titanic and loved the movie. The history of the beautiful ship interests me so much. So the past two rainy days I have sat down and read I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic,1912 by Lauren Tarshis.

The first chapter of the book was a flash-forward to when the boat was sinking. I was sort of confused while reading, I was thinking why are they not writing about the moments up until the boat sinking, or why aren't they writing about when the boat hit the iceberg. I soon realized after starting the second chapter that it was a flash-forward. The second chapter went back when the boat was sailing. The story consisted of three main characters, George, his little sister Phoebe, and their Aunt Daisy. They were sailing back to America after their Aunt Daisy took George and his sister to London for his tenth birthday. (I need an aunt that will take me to Europe for my Birthday) They were from New York, which is where their mom and dad still are. Throughout the book, George lived up to his mischievous ways. He was constantly sneaking off and exploring the ship and doing things he was not supposed to, his Aunt Daisy was getting very angry with him. One day he went on an adventure to find Mr. Andrew, the ship designer, he wanted to talk to him about the structure of the ship and why everyone is saying its the ship that will never sink. Mr. Andrew showed him the blueprints of the ship and what all the rooms were. The next day George ventured off to see parts of the ships that he learned about by looking at the blueprints. He heard a large noise and things rumbled. He ran to the room but on his way, he noticed ice and slush on one of the decks. He got to the room and noticed that Daisy, his sister, went looking for him and now she is somewhere on the ship. The rest of the book consisted of what everyone knows, the ship was sinking. Did George find his sister and did they get to land safely? Did their Aunt make it out as well? Read to find out!

I was sort of disappointed with this book, I understand that is it a children's book but the sentences used were very plain and boring. It was just dry. The author wrote and wrote about Georges adventures on the ship but then did not write as much about the ship sinking. I was thinking about why she would have done this? Maybe because elementary students probably have not watched the movie so they are not basing their thoughts off that like I am? However, this would be a great book to read before talking about the Titanic in history class. Within the book, I saw that the author wrote other I survived books. I would be interested to see if I liked some of her other books. Overall, I would recommend this to elementary students. However, I'll stick to watching the movie!