THE TITANIC TEST

Simpson’s YA time-travel adventure and romance is set on the tragic 1912 maiden voyage of the Titanic.

Readers meet 17-year-old Charlotte (Charlie) Landers in present-day California on her surfboard. She is about to face the most difficult challenge of her young life: Charlie has inherited her parents’ unique gene sequence: With the aid of a special pin, she can travel through time. She is entering her junior year of high school at the Windline Academy for potential time travelers. If she makes it through high school successfully, she will be issued her own time-travel pin. Charlie must pass the Academy’s Junior Year and Senior Year Tests, in which the students are sent to a time and place in the past where they must complete specific tasks. After a series of interviews and evaluations, Charlie, who is not so excited about time travel (“In my opinion, history and art could be learned while comfortably seated in a plastic chair in a classroom”), learns her assignment: She is to board the infamous Titanic, locate and retrieve an elaborately, jewel-bedecked copy of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (currently sitting on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean), and return to the present before the ship sinks. An unidentified “Minder,” taking his or her Senior Year Test, will be sent to observe. There is one major caveat—she is to do nothing that will disturb the time continuum. Simpson has done her research; she brings the Titanic to life with sumptuous, detailed descriptions of the ship’s décor, the fashions on display, the food, and many of its notable passengers and crew. In addition to being an action-packed adventure, the narrative raises a quintessential question of morality: Can Charlie, knowing that some 1,500 people will soon die in the frigid Atlantic, really refrain from trying to prevent the tragedy? There is also a delightful embedded love story involving Charlie and her Minder, who is also her lifelong friend and nemesis. Simpson’s well-scripted dialogue captures the manners and linguistic structure of the period, with amusing instances of miscommunication when Charlie slips and uses 20th-century terminology.

A poignant and wistful fantasy with two entertaining protagonists.