BOOK REVIEW - On Board the TITANIC - with a Touch of Humor...



An informative illustrated book

We were reading "On Board The TITANIC (subtitled - What it was like when the great liner sank)" by Shelley Tanaka.  I hadn't even read beyond the first page but the children were laughing.  And the loss of more than a thousand lives, and a great ship, isn't something you would think would be amusing.

Why were Alisdair and Isobel laughing?  It was all down to one sentence... The book begins with the actual events of Wednesday, April 10, 1912 as it describes 17-year old Jack Thayer and his parents settling into their rooms on the C-deck of the ill-fated liner.

One of the paragraphs begins:  "Inside their suite the smell of fresh paint still lingered, and Mrs. Thayer asked the steward to open the portholes."

The next sentence was the one that did it ... "PORTERS then arrived with their luggage, and his parents began supervising the unpacking."

"Hey," I said, Interrupting my own reading.  "I didn't know John and I were on the Titanic when she sailed!  You kids weren't on the boat, but John and I were!"

It took awhile, but we collected our composure and finished the chapter... I had always perceived the sinking of the R. M. S. Titanic to be something that happened a very long, long time ago. However, I have just realized the tragic event occurred just a little over fifty years before I was born.  So it's not such distant history, after all.

It never hurts to laugh at yourself.  Who knows?  You might even learn something from the experience!