This was my first photo essay book to read. I choose this book becuase I thought it would be a great resource to have this upcoming school year when my entire middle school will be reading the book Titanic Young Survivors by Allan Zullo. I think when students can see pictures of what they are reading about they are able to make great conections and retain more information. What better way that a book full of pictues! I have been looking at several pictues already to include in my lessons and as a resource for other teachers at my school to use. This was a collection of photographs of a ship that lived on the ocean for only five days and a few hours. I was amazed at the number of phots that it contained! Lots of Father Browne's pictures were featured, including an extremely cool double exposure of the First Class deck and a First Class passengers' private Promenade deck.
There were, unfortunately, quite a few Olympic pictures. With the title of the book being Titanic in Photographs , I found this disappointing. I must admit that seeing a book published in 2012 still featuring photos of another ship is a turn off of sorts. However, the saving grace of this book is the sheer number of pictures as I said before. With this also being the 100th anniversary of the Titanic, I believe that there will be a lot of talk on the news, local papers, and on line.
Another thing I noticed and had to really look at closely to see a difference was that a lot of the boat pictures were the same shot with a tiny degree of angle change, but they were the actual ship.
The text is sound, easy to read and engaging. It takes you through from the
inception of these large ships to the calamity and aftermath. There are a few
details, especially found in the solid captions to each photo, that I was not
even aware of. Its always exciting to discover some new tidbit of information
regarding Titanic that I never knew before, rather than a simple rehash of the
known details for example the fate of the lifeboats was addressed fully and there were a lot of shots I had not seen before. When the movie of the Titanic came out in 1998, I was just 17 years old and the lifeboat situation really bothered me. It was just something I just couldn't wrap my head around. Even with some Olympic floating around in the book, it is still well worth the time and effort and is a good fit for a Titanic resource. Its a great start off point for any person just getting interested in the tale of Titanic.
Hi Sarah
ReplyDeleteAs the author of this book I read your review with interest. Thanks for taking the time to read the book and also to provide some comments.
I was a little surprised that you felt there were ‘quite a few’ photos of Olympic in this book. As you rightly point out with the book’s title, the focus was photos of Titanic. While there are photos of Olympic in the book (or other non-Titanic photos), in the earlier chapters they appear when Olympic is alongside Titanic or at least Titanic is in the shot somewhere, or to illustrate elements of construction.
There is a very small handful of photos of Olympic’s interiors later in the book – these were included only when they add to the story or visual element being explored and there’s only 7 in this section compared to a total of around 40-50 interior and deck photos of Titanic.
If you’re referring to the color section, then this is perhaps where most of the images do represent Olympic. When these were painted in 1910, they were meant to represent both Olympic and Titanic but these days it is accepted that they mostly represent Olympic. As all available photos from the time are b&w, these illustrations were included in order to remind the reader that the ship did exist in color.
Regards,
Daniel