The Titanic Mission

February 1, 2017
In the second installment of the Flashback Four series, time-travelers Luke, Julia, David, and Isabel are off on a new adventure, this time boarding the Titanic to snap a photograph as it sinks. The friends (Luke and Julia are white, David is African-American, and Latina Isabel is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic) failed in their debut mission: to get a picture of Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address. Now they're anxious for a new adventure and decide to visit the Titanic on April 15, 1912, the day it sank. Their employer, white, wheelchair-using billionaire Chris Zandergoth, uses her interactive smartboard as a time-traveling device and equips the kids with a new Text Through Time device so she can communicate with them and pull them off the ship just before it sinks. Of course, even with the TTT, everything does not go swimmingly, and the foursome may well get trapped in time, if they survive at all. An introduction presents the basic Titanic story, archival photographs are scattered throughout the text, and a concluding "Facts & Fictions" section tells more. Gutman enriches the tale with moral dilemmas, including whether or not the protagonists should go against instructions to record but not change history and warn the captain of the impending disaster. A fizzy, fast-paced read with lots of history woven in. (Adventure. 8-12)

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March 15, 2017
Grades 3-6 Luke, Julia, David, and Isabelmillionaire inventor Miss Zandergoth's Flashback Four want another chance to time travel, despite their earlier failure to get a photo of Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address. Miss Z is reluctant, but the teens offer to photograph the sinking of the Titanic. The four are deposited on the ship mere hours before the event, but last-minute fumbles prevent their rescue. Will Miss Z be able to extract them from 1912 and return them to modern times? Fans of The Flashback Four: The Lincoln Project (2016) will welcome another entry in the series. Gutman keeps the easygoing tone of the first book, despite the seriousness of the tragedy, and his narrator regularly hops in and out of the story to provide background, historical facts, or instruct readers. Despite that choice, the gravity and heartbreak of the situation cannot help but come through. There are real and imaginary photos included, along with STEM content, a diagram or two, and an extended author's note separating fact and fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2017
Again transported via mysterious billionaire Miss Z's sophisticated time machine, this time to 1912, four Boston twelve-year-olds are tasked with photographing the Titanic moments before the tragedy. They encounter a series of mishaps culminating with a failure to return to the present in the installment's abrupt cliffhanger ending. The fast-paced and easy-to-read narrative includes photographs of several real-life passengers.

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)