Hi, I'm Janet Manley, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times.
Last year, my then seven-year-old son had a showcase for his summer odds camp.
When we walked in to see what he'd been working on, there was just an entire table covered in pictures of the Titanic.
The four funnels, the red and white, black and yellow colors of the boat,
repeated again and again on these pieces of Butch's paper.
He knew all about the construction of the ship, the names of the sister ships, the shipping companies at the time,
but he also knew about how it sank and he knew about the rescue of the survivors.
If you go online and type in, my kid is obsessed with the Titanic.
There are tons of Reddit threads about it and people claiming to have been Titanic kids.
There are books and museums, a whole world that caters to people who are into this story.
I wanted to hear from the kids themselves and hear what it was about the Titanic that got them so interested.
Is that your book?
Yeah.
The story of the Titanic, the unsinkable ship.
I called up Ozzy, who is five, and his mom, Tara, on FaceTime.
They live in Hastings, England, and their house is full of Titanic toys that Ozzy collects.
While he was showing me his Titanic toys and doing somersaults on the couch,
Ozzy told me that he believes he was there over a hundred years ago when the ship sank.
I've been on the Titanic.
He's decided he believes that in a past life he was on the Titanic.