Radar and the Raft: A True Story About a Scientific Marvel, the Lives it Saved, and the World it Changed [Hardcover]

This science-history nonfiction adventure mash-up will be on every middle grade reader's radar.

Who knew that an improbable rescue during WWII would be facilitated by scientific discoveries in the 18th century?

Expert researcher and educator Jeff Lantos makes the history-science connection between batteries and radar and one oceanic adventure in this engaging middle-grade escapade told in two intertwining storylines.

Readers are first invited to follow scientific discoveries in the 1700s that eventually lead to the creation of radar, and are then immersed in a world where World War II rages. German U-boats sink ships, and the ship just hit has an American mom and her two young kids aboard. Now Ethel, Robert, and Mary Bell are on a raft with fourteen other people, floating in the ocean and hoping for rescue.

Lantos expertly weaves radar's story of discovery with the Bell family's harrowing journey, bringing readers on an exciting fast-paced adventure through history.

♦ A rare and exhilarating mix of hard science and seagoing terror.
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review♦ Interwoven storylines link a triumphant technological advance with a harrowing tale of survival at sea.
In a real pleaser for readers with an expansive range of interests, Lantos twines a meaty account of the invention of radar with the story of how that device came into play in rescuing a raft crowded with the survivors of an American cargo ship torpedoed weeks before by a U-boat in shark-infested waters. He traces the history of radar from 18th-century Italian anatomy professor Luigi Galvani’s experiments with twitching frog legs to the powerful detection device that gave the Allies a significant, perhaps even decisive, advantage in World War II. Lantos also tells somel3-