Tonight on the Titanic

Mary Pope Osborne's Tonight on the Titanic is a Magic Tree House adventure for 7 year olds that drops Jack and Annie onto the famous ship just as it hits the iceberg.

What happens

It's book 17 in the series, and it starts a brand-new set of adventures. On a stormy night Annie wakes Jack because the rain seems to be saying "Come now!"

Up in the tree house they find a scruffy little dog (Annie names him Teddy on the spot) and a note from Morgan. Teddy is under a spell. To free him, Jack and Annie have to be given four special gifts, and the first is a gift from a ship lost at sea.

The tree house lands between the funnels of a huge ship, on a freezing, starry night in 1912. A lookout shouts. There's a jolt and a scraping sound. Then Annie shines her torch on a life ring and reads the name.

Jack knows exactly what happened to the Titanic. They could go straight home... but Annie wants to help. So down they go into the ship, looking for anyone who doesn't know yet.

It's gripping, and it's surprisingly moving. Jack reads real facts from their book as they go (there weren't enough lifeboats, and the ships that heard the call for help were too far away). The card players laugh at Annie's warnings. Then the floor starts to slope and water creeps along a corridor.

Kids who love true history will be glued to it. You can almost feel the cold, and there's a race against the clock right to the end.

This is a sad one as well as an exciting one. People on board won't believe the children, the ship goes down, and Jack and Annie only just escape. Both of them cry when they get home. No deaths happen on the page, but a fact page at the back says more than 1,500 people died.

If your reader gets very upset about real disasters, it's one to read together. If they're already fascinated by the Titanic, this is a gentle and careful way in.

What to read next

If they want to go back to one of Jack and Annie's earlier trips, try The Knight at Dawn. It starts the morning after their visit to the dinosaurs, with Jack writing a list of all the strange things that just happened.