Into the Depths: The Titanic: Lost ... And Found by Judy Donnelly

The first big failure of the twentieth century happened in the cold, dark North Atlantic Ocean.

It is April 14, 1912. The Titanic is in the icy waters off the coast of Canada. It's near midnight and most of the passengers are asleep. The sea is smooth as glass. The air is biting cold.

The lookout high above the ship in the crow's nest stares into the darkness. Suddenly he sees a mountain of ice.

The Titanic is heading straight for it.

In the wheelhouse, the seaman on duty cannot steer away fast enough to keep the huge ship from scraping the side of the iceberg, which tears into five compartments of the inner hull. The unsinkable Titanic, on its maiden voyage, is already doomed.

Britain had long ruled the seas, and the Titanic was to be its symbol in the new century. On its first voyage to New York City, the largest, most luxurious, and fastest passenger liner ever to sail, said to be "unsinkable" because of its double hull, sank, bow first, into the icy Atlantic barely two hours later. With the orchestra playing lively tunes on the deck, terrified passengers, some in evening dress, some in pajamas, milled about on the deck, unsure what to do. Below in the lower decks, poor people waited for someone who never came to tell them what to do. The truth was that the ship carried 2,227 passengers, but had only room in its lifeboats to rescue 1,l00 of them. No lifeboat drills had even occurred, and the seamen failed to get all of the passengers on deck loaded and launched into the water. As people screamed, some jumping into the sea to reach a lifeboat, the orchestra switched to the music of a hymn, "Nearer My God to Thee," while the deck tipped and the ship went down, leaving only 705 survivors to be picked up at dawn by the freighter, Carpathia.

No human saw the Titanic again until 1985, when explorer/scientist Robert Ballard's submarine Argo located the wreck of the ship and sent back photos and video, so that people once again could see the ship and even the elegant stairway of its grand ballroom again, asleep in the deep!

Judy Donnelly's The Titanic: Lost and Found (Step-Into-Reading, Step 4) (Random House) finds just the right rich but readable language to bring this epic disaster to middle readers in all its drama. In brief but poignant sentences and short paragraphs, Donnelly's narrative of this memorable event in history brings the event to life for young readers, assisted by the vivid art of illustrator Keith Kohler. Says School Library Journal, "Exciting nonfiction books for kids just beyond the beginner stage can be hard to come by, and the story of the sinking of the Titanic and its subsequent rediscovery will be the ticket for both hard-to-please young 'real stuff' buffs and older reluctant readers. The descriptions of the ship and action are clear, facts are accurate, and the watercolor illustrations convey the high drama of the sinking. A must."

Another exciting book by author Judy Donnelly in this high-interest historic series for developing readers is her Moonwalk: The First Trip to the Moon (Step-Into-Reading, Step 5) (Random House). And for the amazing photos and story of the visual exploration of the sunken Titanic, look for Robert Ballard's photo essay book, Exploring the Titanic.