Review: SOS Titanic by Eve Bunting

SOS Titanic by Eve Bunting.

Harcourt Childrens Books
Publication Date: April 1996
List Price: $6.99
ISBN-13: 9780152013059

Review: Imagine being on a gigantic marvelous ship knowing that it will sink and not being able to do anything about it. SOS Titanic by Eve Bunting is a spine tingling book for people who enjoy a historical fiction on one of the most tragic events known to man. Barry O'Neill is prepared to leave Ireland and his grandparents to go to America and see his parents for the first time. Although, the Flynns, Peegen and her two bandit brothers that want to throw Barry overboard are also traveling on the unsinkable ship. SOS Titanic will take you through Barry's journey containing love, drama, fear, and death. However, in Barry's journey his enemies become his friends that save his life.

Barry O'Neil doesn't want to leave his childhood and his homeland to go to a foreign land of mystery, but he has no choice. On the night of the Titanic's departure, Barry went out on the deck for some fresh air where he comes along a steerage (lower class) party. When he looks down from the top deck he sees a beautiful young girl dancing which he realizes is Peegen Flynn. In his amaze he drops one of his gloves which was given to him by his grandpa before his departure. Unfortunately the Flynn brothers recognized Barry and pounded him. Peegen secretly returned the glove to Barry and he realized that she wasn't like her brothers. Barry started to hear stories about too many icebergs in the way of the Titanic and that it was not in a safe position. One day later, when the Titanic hits a giant iceberg, Barry's emotions force him to leave the safety of his lifeboat to help the Flynns escape, who are with the steerage passengers, trapped behind gates. Read the book to see who dies and who survives.

Eve Bunting sticks a great read to the children that provides knowledge on a terrifying event. SOS Titanic is packed with detail that creates a vivid picture in the readers head. Eve bunting did an amazing job showing the true emotions of the characters. This make the reader feel like they are in the story. Specifically, when the Titanic is sinking the reader will feel like they are on the boat and seconds away from death. She also does a good job on mixing different emotions together in one character and makes it easy to get inside the character's head. Another great factor about SOS Titanic is that is an extremely suspenseful page turner. The reader can never tell if Barry is going to be attacked by the Flynns or if he is going to fall in love. SOS Titanic really captures the presence of the ship sinking and how people lost their lives. Eve Bunting even managed to put real facts and names of real people that faced the spine tingling event. Learning about tragedies like these is not always interesting to children by reading facts. Eve Bunting makes SOS Titanic a great way to make children interested in learning about the Titanic and it uses vocabulary that they can comprehend. Although the Titanic ends its voyage in a horrifying manner, I hope Eve Bunting's writing never does.

Review written by Ravi (7th grade student).

We would like to thank Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing a copy of SOS Titanic for this review.

Have you read SOS Titanic? How would you rate it?