The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic

by Allan Wolf

Overview

"A lyrical, monumental work of fact and imagination." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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. Slipping in telegraphs, undertaker’s reports, and other records, poet Allan Wolf offers a breathtaking, intimate glimpse at the lives behind the tragedy, told with clear-eyed compassion and astounding emotional power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536246414
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	10/15/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	10 MB
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Allan Wolf is an 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 Poetry Alive! Allan Wolf knows poems.

This expertise was exhibited in Allan Wolf’s first book with Candlewick Press, The Blood-Hungry Spleen and Other Poems About Our Parts. A collection of wacky—and anatomically correct—poems about body parts, The Blood-Hungry Spleen is transforming science classes across the country. Before starting the book, Allan Wolf drew on inspiration from his stint as Poet in Residence at a school in Seoul, Korea. “A sixth-grade life science class had displayed their poems about anatomy on a life-size chart of the human body,” explains the author. “There was a poem about the intestines on the intestines. A poem about the brain was written on the brain.” Since then, he says, “the human body has proved to be an infinite universe of poetic inspiration.”

Allan Wolf’s next book with Candlewick Press, New Found Land: Lewis and Clark’s Voyage of Discovery, also reveals the writer’s poetic roots. The exhilarating tale of Lewis and Clark’s journey is written in poetic form: a medley of lyrical and powerful voices from the surprisingly diverse crew. “During the four years it took to research and write New Found Land, my head was constantly crowded with the novel’s fourteen voices,” Allan Wolf says. “They talked to me as I made breakfast, as I dressed the baby, as I delivered newspapers, and as I brushed my teeth. They talked and talked. Alone in my car I began to talk back. And together all fifteen of us worked out the details of the story. Happily, my head is now quiet, the voices having moved to their permanent home within this book.”

More recently, Allan wrote Zane’s Trace, a coming-of-age road story with a supernatural twist, and The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic, featuring twenty-four haunting voices of the Titanic tragedy, including the iceberg itself, evoked in a stunning tour de force.

Allan Wolf lives in North Carolina with his wife and three children.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A masterpiece. Wolf leaves no emotion unplumbed, no area of research uninvestigated, and his voices are so authentic they hurt. Everyone should read it.
—Booklist

Wolf constructs a richly textured novel in verse that recreates the Titanic's ill-fated journey, predominantly through the voices of her passengers... Wolf's carefully crafted characters evolve as the voyage slides to its icy conclusion; readers may be surprised by the potency of the final impact.
—Publishers Weekly

Twenty-four voices-of passengers, rats and even the iceberg-evoke the human tragedy of the ill-fated voyage. Wolf brings the history and, more importantly, the human scale of the event to life by giving voice to the players themselves . . . A lyrical, monumental work of fact and imagination that reads like an oral history revved up by the drama of the event.
—Kirkus Reviews

Wolf's novel in verse gives voice, through first-person accounts, to a cross section of passengers and crew on the Titanic: how they boarded, why they're there, and how they face the disaster. . . . The themes of natural disaster, technology, social class, survival, and death all play out here.
—The Horn Book

Editorial Reviews

Wolf (Zane's Trace) constructs a richly textured novel in verse that recreates the Titanic's ill-fated journey, predominantly through the voices of her passengers. The speakers include John Jacob Astor, ("the unsinkable") Margaret Brown, Captain E.J. Smith, and little-known individuals whose stories Wolf draws from research and archival materials. A Lebanese refugee, traveling alone with her brother, finds first love; a tailor, accompanied by his two sons, anguishes over his broken marriage; and a gambler cons his way through the first-class passengers' pocketbooks. A ship rat speaks, as does the iceberg itself-a choice that could have become esoteric ("I am the ice. I have no need of wings./ I only need the hearts Titanic brings")-but earns its place within a composite that includes colloquial speech, introspective interior monologues, and rhyming poetry. Throughout, sequences flash forward to an undertaker's handling of the bodies ("Bodies scattered for miles, in every direction./ Bodies as far as my indifferent eyes can see"), assuring that the ending is never in question. But Wolf's carefully crafted characters evolve as the voyage slides to its icy conclusion; readers may be surprised by the potency of the final impact. Ages 14-up.
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Publishers Weekly

A masterpiece. Wolf leaves no emotion unplumbed, no area of research uninvestigated, and his voices are so authentic they hurt. Everyone should read it.
—Booklist (starred review)

Wolf constructs a richly textured novel in verse that recreates the Titanic's ill-fated journey, predominantly through the voices of her passengers... Wolf's carefully crafted characters evolve as the voyage slides to its icy conclusion; readers may be surprised by the potency of the final impact.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Twenty-four voices-of passengers, rats and even the iceberg-evoke the human tragedy of the ill-fated voyage. Wolf brings the history and, more importantly, the human scale of the event to life by giving voice to the players themselves . . . A lyrical, monumental work of fact and imagination that reads like an oral history revved up by the drama of the event.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Wolf's novel in verse gives voice, through first-person accounts, to a cross section of passengers and crew on the Titanic: how they boarded, why they're there, and how they face the disaster. . . . The themes of natural disaster, technology, social class, survival, and death all play out here.
—The Horn Book (starred review)

Wolf allows readers to experience the tragedy from all decks.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

This is a well-detailed and historically accurate portrayal of the events and brings the feelings and emotions of the characters alive.
—Library Media Connection (highly recommended)

Moving... From their embarkation on the "great floating city . . . with its cargo of human hearts," the characters take turns relating their stories even as disaster engulfs them.
—The Wall Street Journal

The resulting record of the brief voyage gives readers an emotional punch. The strength of the effect is astonishing given that the ship sank nearly one hundred years ago and has been the stuff of legend ever since... Very enthusiastically recommended.
—Children's Literature

Exhaustively researched, The Watch That Ends the Night vividly limns the naivete, the disbelief, and finally the hopelessness of the ship’s crew and passengers.
—Poetry Foundation (book of the month)

From the Publisher

Gr 9 Up—Talented poet, Allan Wolf, incorporates both accurate historical accounts and his own speculative research into his captivating novel in verse (Candlewick, 2011), an imagined account of the Titanic's ill fated voyage. With 24 personal narratives ranging in perspective from the ship's captain to a refugee in the third class to the iceberg itself, the story unfolds from preparations and boarding to evacuation attempts and the body collections by coroners. The ensemble narrators unfold another brilliant facet of this historical fiction gem, providing varied accents and nuances for each character. This phenomenal audio version of a stirring story should be part of all high school and public library collections.—Jessica Miller, West Springfield Public Library, MA

School Library Journal

This production tells the story of the passengers on the TITANIC through interlinked poems from multiple perspectives. Five narrators help listeners keep the large cast straight as they create appropriate and distinct voices for each character. The range of accents (American, British, Norwegian, Irish, French, and Pakistani, to name a few), pitches, and tones makes the poetry and story accessible, and the way the production incorporates details like the chanting of a mail sorter and a periodic Morse Code sound effect adds verisimilitude. Dispatches from an undertaker who retrieves bodies after the accident are a continual reminder of where this story is headed, making the narrators’ jobs all the more important as they urge listeners to become invested in these characters. A weighty and compelling listen. A.F. 2012 Audies Winner © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2011 - AudioFile