On Board the Titanic by Shelley Tanaka, paintings by Ken Marschall (Nonfiction Literature)

http://prezi.com/r13qwpzlj_p3/on-board-the-titanic-by-shelley/

Shelley Tanaka's biography, On Board the Titanic, focuses on the story of Jack Thayer, a teenage boy, and Harold Bride, the man who runs the telegraphs to support communication between ships, on the Titanic's first and last voyage. The author also outlines aspects of the Titanic such as the gym, the swimming pool, and the Cafe Parisien. After Captain Smith hit an iceberg, the Titanic began to sink and over half of the people on board were not able to receive a life boat. Eventually the Carpathia, another cruise ship, came to rescue the remaining survivors from the life boats. 

In my classroom, I would use On Board the Titanic to incorporate history and literature. The students could create their own timeline of the events of the Titanic and compare it to the timeline in the story. Also, I could incorporate science with literature by having the students conduct experiments to discover why items float or sink and to explain why the Titanic sank.