All Stations! Distress!: April 15, 1912: The Day the Titanic Sank (Actual Times) - Hardcover

Don Brown's previous books include Kid Blink Beats the World, Mack Made Movies and Across a Dark and Wild Sea. He lives on Long Island, New York.

Starred Review. Grade 3–5—On the title-page spread, a Titanic crew member confides that "God himself could not sink this ship!" preparing readers for the well-known fate of the "unsinkable" steamer. A combination of poor choices and bad luck dogged the Titanic on its maiden voyage from England to New York, and controversy remains about its design, its speed in the iceberg-laden North Atlantic, and the lack of preparations for evacuation. Brown's watercolor illustrations capture the grandeur of the ship and the enormity of the failed escape: a mass of angry passengers confronts a crewman waving a gun, the steerage passengers are released to find that many of the lifeboats have been lowered half-empty, and survivors watch from a capsized lifeboat as the ship upends and sinks into the ocean with hundreds of passengers trapped onboard. Brown includes first-person testimony in the narrative, which ends with the rescue of some of the survivors. This is a wonderfully accessible version of an endlessly fascinating subject.—Rebecca Donnelly, Loma Colorado Public Library, Rio Rancho, NM
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