In her new book for young adults, Titanic: Voices from the Disaster (Scholastic Press, 2012), Deborah Hopkinson, noted author of historical fiction and nonfiction for young readers, resurfaces a hundred-year-old tragedy through the stories and voices of those who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912.

Voices from the Disaster includes letters and narrative accounts from Titanic’s passengers to prompt readers to think of those whose journey ended along with what Hopkinson calls &#8220a masterpiece of human engineering:&#8221

. In a letter to their parents, Harvey, Lot, and Madge wrote, &#8220Well dears so far we are having a delightful trip the weather is beautiful and the ship magnificent. Lots of love and don’t worry about us. Ever your loving children.&#8221

. &#8220You have to try to imagine it &#8211 the last moment I saw my dear sister stand there with little Thelma tightly in her arms.&#8221 Ernst Persson, third class passenger.

. &#8220I almost thought, as I saw her sink beneath the water, that I could see Jacques, standing where I had left him and waving at me.&#8221 May Futrelle, first class passenger remembering her husband

&#8220This book is an introduction to the disaster and to just a few of the people who survived,&#8221 says Hopkinson, &#8220I hope their stories and voices remind you, as they do me, that our lives are fragile and precious. And I hope they make you wonder, as I do, what it would have been like to be on the Titanic that night so long ago.&#8221

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