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1st out of 66 books
—
94 voters
The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic
by
Allan Wolf
Arrogance and innocence, hubris and hope--twenty-four haunting voices of the Titanic tragedy, as well as the iceberg itself, are evoked in a stunning tour de force.
Millionaire John Jacob Astor hopes to bring home his pregnant teen bride with a minimum of media scandal. A beautiful Lebanese refugee, on her way to family in Florida, discovers the first stirrings of love. And...more
Millionaire John Jacob Astor hopes to bring home his pregnant teen bride with a minimum of media scandal. A beautiful Lebanese refugee, on her way to family in Florida, discovers the first stirrings of love. And...more
Hardcover, 480 pages
Published
October 11th 2011
by Candlewick Press
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Complete review at: http://www.teachmentortexts.com/2011/...
Told from 24 different perspectives in multiple genres such as verse, letters, undertaker's notes, telegrams, forms and booklets, this harrowing tale takes the reader through the journey that different people took on the Titanic. The points of view range from workers like lookouts and stokers, 3rd class passengers like an immigrant and refugee, 2nd class passengers like a tailor, 1st class passengers like a millionaire and socialite as...more
Told from 24 different perspectives in multiple genres such as verse, letters, undertaker's notes, telegrams, forms and booklets, this harrowing tale takes the reader through the journey that different people took on the Titanic. The points of view range from workers like lookouts and stokers, 3rd class passengers like an immigrant and refugee, 2nd class passengers like a tailor, 1st class passengers like a millionaire and socialite as...more
This book is amazing.
It is told from the point of view of two dozen people- including a ship rat, the ice berg and many others. It is told in poetry. Honestly, I usually don't like reading poetry, but this was amazing and so fun to read. I loved how Allan Wolf was able to make the terribly sad story of the Titanic end hopeful and bittersweet- amazing.
It also amazing that all the characters are *real*. They really did exist. Allan Wolf must have done an amazing amount of research.
The bits from...more
It is told from the point of view of two dozen people- including a ship rat, the ice berg and many others. It is told in poetry. Honestly, I usually don't like reading poetry, but this was amazing and so fun to read. I loved how Allan Wolf was able to make the terribly sad story of the Titanic end hopeful and bittersweet- amazing.
It also amazing that all the characters are *real*. They really did exist. Allan Wolf must have done an amazing amount of research.
The bits from...more
The Watch That Ends the Night
I’m sure you all know the story of the Titanic, or at least some of it. If you want to learn more about this mighty cruise ship or like historical fiction try The Watch That Ends the Night by Allan Wolf. It’s written in free verse poetry but reads like a regular book. (Free verse poetry has no rules and really isn’t at all structured like the poetry you’re thinking of.) This book also has some concrete (shape) poems. That means the words form a picture. It’s pretty c...more
I’m sure you all know the story of the Titanic, or at least some of it. If you want to learn more about this mighty cruise ship or like historical fiction try The Watch That Ends the Night by Allan Wolf. It’s written in free verse poetry but reads like a regular book. (Free verse poetry has no rules and really isn’t at all structured like the poetry you’re thinking of.) This book also has some concrete (shape) poems. That means the words form a picture. It’s pretty c...more
The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic by Allan Wolf is a group of poems describing the thoughts and feelings and experiences that people on the Titanic had when the ship began its journey and ended its journey in a devasting crash. What I liked about this book was that first off, it was all poems. Even though it could have gotten boring, it didn't because these poems told a story. I also liked that each poem was from a different voice and described there perspective and experien...more
It is Sunday, April 14, 1942, the RMS Titanic, the largest and most luxurious ship ever created is 1,400 miles out to sea. The ship carries an estimated 2,200 men, women and children headed for New York City. Each passenger is given a first, second, or third class ticket to board the ship. People from many cultures and social standing took their place aboard Titanic's maiden voyage. But in the distance awaits the iceberg that will change Titanic’s journey and it's many voices forever.
The Watch...more
The Watch...more
Really?
I tried this audio book because it was listed on the Hub Reading Challenge 2013. Oh well.
I recently read Titanic:Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson,Titanic: Voices From the Disaster and this one just can't compete.
From the beginning I struggled listening to a malevolent female iceberg, who has watched human history since the cave men (really? all the way from the north pole? that's some vision) and set out on purpose to 'meet' the Titanic. Or talk about the 'voice' of the rat,...more
I tried this audio book because it was listed on the Hub Reading Challenge 2013. Oh well.
I recently read Titanic:Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson,Titanic: Voices From the Disaster and this one just can't compete.
From the beginning I struggled listening to a malevolent female iceberg, who has watched human history since the cave men (really? all the way from the north pole? that's some vision) and set out on purpose to 'meet' the Titanic. Or talk about the 'voice' of the rat,...more
Very interesting take on Titanic disaster. The "voices" are from various passengers and crew as well as the rats and iceberg.
There are some parts of the book that were different and almost entertaining, providing a counterpoint to seriousness of the other voices. I found the iceberg and the rats provided that counterpoint. Each provides a unique perspective, one very different from the typical human perspective. The iceberg is portrayed as ancient and new, innocent and wise while the rats are j...more
There are some parts of the book that were different and almost entertaining, providing a counterpoint to seriousness of the other voices. I found the iceberg and the rats provided that counterpoint. Each provides a unique perspective, one very different from the typical human perspective. The iceberg is portrayed as ancient and new, innocent and wise while the rats are j...more
Allan Wolf's portrayal of 24 different characters in, "The Watch That Ends the Night Voices from the Titanic," is such a powerful novel delivering the emotions of every aspect of the Titanic. The novel, written all in verse, gives the perspective of the RMS Titanic from the rats, to the shipbuilder himself. For a story that everyone already knows the ending too, Wolf does a wonderful job at retelling it, and letting the reader emerge themselves in to the Titanic as if they were these characters...more
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Part historical fiction and part documentary, The Watch That Ends the Night tells the story of the RMS Titanic's celebrated maiden voyage on April 10, 1912, and its sudden tragic demise on April 15, when it collided at night with an iceberg. Told in mostly free verse poems through the voices of passengers, on-board rats, the iceberg, and, from the very beginning in a poignant flashforward, an undertaker on his way by boat to the scene of the sinking where he eventually faces the gruesome task of...more
The Watch That Ends the Night Voices from the Titani Allan Wolf 456 poetic pages
100 years ago, the Titanic Sank. It has been an intriguing story ever since: The people on that boat were some of the richest in the world. But the immigrants were also some of the poorest. It was the biggest boat, ever to sail. It was its first voyage. There was the crew and the passengers tells their own story in
poetry that reads like page. No one is left out. Even the ship rat, the undertaker who took care of the...more
100 years ago, the Titanic Sank. It has been an intriguing story ever since: The people on that boat were some of the richest in the world. But the immigrants were also some of the poorest. It was the biggest boat, ever to sail. It was its first voyage. There was the crew and the passengers tells their own story in
poetry that reads like page. No one is left out. Even the ship rat, the undertaker who took care of the...more
This book is beautifully written and is an incredibly interesting way to read about the Titanic. For me personally, I did not enjoy the length of the story. I really enjoy poetry, but the shift between so many characters and the variation in verse was a lot to handle. I had limited time to enjoy this book, so it was difficult to slowly digest all the verse in this novel. I really enjoyed the young love story and the perspective of the rats and the glaciers. This was an artsy way to really show a...more
The Watch that Ends the Night was recommended to me at the same conference where I was told horrible falsehoods about the plot of Leverage. Our conference leader informed us it was a book of poems written by characters involved with the Titanic, including the Iceberg. And then she read us a passage.
I am the ice. I see tides ebb and flow.
I’ve watched civilizations come and go,
give birth, destroy, restore, be gone, begin.
My blink of an eye is humankind’s tortoise slow.
Today’s now is tomorrow’s way...more
I am the ice. I see tides ebb and flow.
I’ve watched civilizations come and go,
give birth, destroy, restore, be gone, begin.
My blink of an eye is humankind’s tortoise slow.
Today’s now is tomorrow’s way...more
Fans of the Titanic will quickly be drawn into this novel in verse which tells the tale of what happened to the ship from the perspective of a number of different passengers, crew, construction funders/designers, and even a rat and the ice burg that caused so much damaged.
I thought the author did a great job capturing unique voices and presenting them so it is easy to tell them apart. They represent the richest of those on board, such as Molly Brown and John Jacob Astor IV, to immigrants and ot...more
I thought the author did a great job capturing unique voices and presenting them so it is easy to tell them apart. They represent the richest of those on board, such as Molly Brown and John Jacob Astor IV, to immigrants and ot...more
Verse Novel: I have never been a fan of poetry, or verse novels. It is the one aspect of writing that never enthralled me, it never kept me wanting to read more. I think I have a mind block when I see verse novels and the lines do not take up the page, I focus too much on the spacing and how it flows to the next line that it messes up the connection I have with the book. So this book was a struggle for me to say the least. With that being said, I admire Allan Wolf. I admit that I love the histor...more
Wow--this is a stunning novel in verse that traces the Titanic voyage through the eyes of 23 people, the ship rat, plus the iceberg that Titanic hit. There are the captain, shipping executives, millionaires, crew members, children, adults, teens, steerage passengers...Many of them have secrets, and we get to see right into their hearts. Some of them surprised me with their callousness, but most surprised me with their bravery and generosity. Even though you start this book knowing the Titanic si...more
The Watch that Ends the Night was a very interesting and compelling read! The author did an incredible job capturing the perspectives of different passengers on board, and making the personalities and experiences for the characters come to life on the page. Even though I essentially knew the "outcome" of the plot, I still found myself unable to put it down because I felt so invested with the different characters. I loved how the individual story lines unfolded as the Titanic made its journey acr...more
Genre: Verse
I had never read a verse novel before and as I was deciding which one to pick I went with a book I thought I already knew all there was to know. We have all seen the 3 hour Titanic movie, read about or watched a history channel special on this. I was expecting to be a bit bored with this book, but to be very honest I was HOOKED from the first page! I loved the way the story was told in 24 different voices, ideas and thoughts. Each voice was so integral into the storyline of the Titan...more
I had never read a verse novel before and as I was deciding which one to pick I went with a book I thought I already knew all there was to know. We have all seen the 3 hour Titanic movie, read about or watched a history channel special on this. I was expecting to be a bit bored with this book, but to be very honest I was HOOKED from the first page! I loved the way the story was told in 24 different voices, ideas and thoughts. Each voice was so integral into the storyline of the Titan...more
This book was amazing. It's not a story, but it is. Reading about the Titanic of course there are certain things one comes to expect. The journey will be fantastic when it starts, the passengers will be in the lap of luxury, and the ship WILL sink. This book takes everything you would expect and creates accounts of life on the Titanic. Some characters are real people, others are real, but not people. Instead of writing a story about the Titanic though, Allan Wolf went much, much farther. He took...more
The cover caught my eye on a display in the "Young Adult" section of the library (on my way to the DVD's). The subtitle "Voices from the Titanic" caused me to actually pick it up. So I've added another to the books I've read this year commemorating the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic...
The device of "voices" is in fact just that, the story of real victims and survivors as imagined by the author in poetic format. The voices include those we know (among them, Margaret Brown, John J...more
The device of "voices" is in fact just that, the story of real victims and survivors as imagined by the author in poetic format. The voices include those we know (among them, Margaret Brown, John J...more
Absolutely fabulous! When I saw that this audio version won the Audie award for best achievement in production, I decided to try it. I would recommend that you check out both the book and the audio version. What a masterpiece to put this in a poetic form that does not seem at all forced, to include all of the painstaking research, and to make us care about all of the individuals involved. I was so glad that Wolf included the many notes that he did at the end of the book. I often found myself won...more
I saw this on a display shelf at the library and was intrigued by the concept of teling the story from 24 differnt points of view. We are so familiar with the Titanic story that I wondered if Wolf could add anything new.
The answer is yes. In an afterword he describes his historical fiction in the following terms--history is the birdcage and fiction is the bird. Within that birdcage he explores the stories of real Titanic passengers--survivors and deceased--in chronological order, excepting the...more
The answer is yes. In an afterword he describes his historical fiction in the following terms--history is the birdcage and fiction is the bird. Within that birdcage he explores the stories of real Titanic passengers--survivors and deceased--in chronological order, excepting the...more
This book was absolutely fantastic and quite unique. Wolf tells the story of the voyage and subsequent sinking of the TITANIC by way of poetry. Using a dozen or so different voices of real people who sailed on the ship, Wolf weaves together fiction and history to create an utterly compelling tale. Now, I've seen all the Titanic movies and read various other books on the subject - it's always been something that has fascinated me. So I wasn't expecting to feel anything new or different when readi...more
The Titanic story has certainly been told and told again over the 100 years since her sinking, but in this book, Allan Wolf has managed to capture the voices of the beings that were part of that story in a wholly new and captivating way. THE WATCH THAT ENDS THE NIGHT is a novel-in-verse that chronicles the story of the unsinkable Titanic, from the boarding and preparations to set sail to the voyage, the sinking, and the Carpathia's rescue and delivery of the survivors to New York. The undertaker...more
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School Library Journal (October 1, 2011)
Gr 7 Up-Returning to the free-verse narrative structure of New Found Land: Lewis and Clark's Voyage of Discovery (Candlewick, 2007), Wolf gives another watershed historical event a fictional, strongly internalized, obsessively researched treatment. Here the tragedy of the Titanic plays out in 24 voices-including those of survivors and victims-from Captain E.J. Smith down to Lolo Navratil (a toddler who was the last living male passenger), along with a ship...more
Gr 7 Up-Returning to the free-verse narrative structure of New Found Land: Lewis and Clark's Voyage of Discovery (Candlewick, 2007), Wolf gives another watershed historical event a fictional, strongly internalized, obsessively researched treatment. Here the tragedy of the Titanic plays out in 24 voices-including those of survivors and victims-from Captain E.J. Smith down to Lolo Navratil (a toddler who was the last living male passenger), along with a ship...more
The Watch that Ends the Night (Voices from the Titanic)
by Allan Wolf
ISBN: 978 0 7636 3703 3 (hardcovers)
Candlewick Press, 2011, 466pp
From the immense data collected by historians and “Titaniacs” (those hobbyists obsessed with the story) Wolf has written a fascinating and gripping verse “faction” that focuses on 22 selected passengers but extends to the iceberg itself, a ship’s rat having begun with the sombre account from John Snow, the undertaker at sea five days after the sinking to collect th...more
by Allan Wolf
ISBN: 978 0 7636 3703 3 (hardcovers)
Candlewick Press, 2011, 466pp
From the immense data collected by historians and “Titaniacs” (those hobbyists obsessed with the story) Wolf has written a fascinating and gripping verse “faction” that focuses on 22 selected passengers but extends to the iceberg itself, a ship’s rat having begun with the sombre account from John Snow, the undertaker at sea five days after the sinking to collect th...more
Novels in verse, done well, are rare.
And I can show you why…
This is not a poem simply because I say it is.
It is not a poem because I split
A sentence between several lines
.............Or finger the tab key
...................Artfully.
This is not a poem, no not a poem,
Because I repeat a phrase here and there.
This is not a poem because from time to time
I toss in a tired end rhyme
Or use funky punctuation—
To highlight a clause.
This is not a poem because I italicize special thoughts
Or with the clickety...more
And I can show you why…
This is not a poem simply because I say it is.
It is not a poem because I split
A sentence between several lines
.............Or finger the tab key
...................Artfully.
This is not a poem, no not a poem,
Because I repeat a phrase here and there.
This is not a poem because from time to time
I toss in a tired end rhyme
Or use funky punctuation—
To highlight a clause.
This is not a poem because I italicize special thoughts
Or with the clickety...more
Allan Wolf's novel The Watch That Ends The Night is an amazing piece of work. I've been a Titanic wonk for years, ever since learning about it in grade school. It's such a powerful, poignant story, and in Wolf's hands it takes on new life. Wolf tells the story in verse, encompassing the thoughts and feelings of twenty-four characters, including the iceberg and a rat aboard ship. I've been reading about Titanic for decades, but this is the first time I got a sense of the stories across ALL the cl...more
"Captain Larnder whispers respectfully, 'And so we begin.'
I turn again to the far-off flock of gulls -
smudges of white floating on the green waves -
and I admit to myself what I knew at the first sight of them:
Those are no seagulls at all. Those are bodies.
More bodies. Each one waiting in a bright white vest.
My God. My God. My God.
Bodies scattered for miles, in every direction.
Bodies as far as my indifferent eyes can see."
Written from the perspectives of many involved with the Titanic disaster -...more
I turn again to the far-off flock of gulls -
smudges of white floating on the green waves -
and I admit to myself what I knew at the first sight of them:
Those are no seagulls at all. Those are bodies.
More bodies. Each one waiting in a bright white vest.
My God. My God. My God.
Bodies scattered for miles, in every direction.
Bodies as far as my indifferent eyes can see."
Written from the perspectives of many involved with the Titanic disaster -...more
Stunning in its scope and moving in its use of 24 different voices, including a rat that scurries across the pages and through the ship, as well as different formats, including letters, notes, telegrams, hymns, internal dialogue, and Morse Code, this book makes it seem as though the Titanic just set sail rather than having embarked on its brief but eventful voyage almost 100 years ago. Although it took me awhile to get drawn into the story because so many different individuals were being introdu...more
Incredible research and the free verse form combine to put the reader squarely on the deck of the doomed Titanic. You feel the excitement and the hype as the ship prepares to launch; the luxury, pomp and pageantry of the voyage and the growing tension as telegraph after telegraph arrive warning the ship of ice ahead. Of course the ship sails on blithely unaware of the doom that awaits. The characters in the book are real people, and Wolf lets us know when he is inventing and embellishing events....more
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Allan Wolf: educator-writer-musician extraordinaire. He has literally hundreds of poems committed to memory. He is a veteran traveler through all the diverse worlds of poetry--from poetry slams to public schools, salons to saloons. He turns classic poetry into acoustic tunes as the drummer for The Dead Poets band. He put the Oh! in poetry as the educational director for national touring company Po...more
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“Marriage without struggle is like an unfired clay pot.
It is easily made, but it will not stand the test of time.”
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It is easily made, but it will not stand the test of time.”
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