Life As We Knew It

Wow! This was an amazing book. There are very few books that I open these days that I find absolutely compelling, but this was one. When the moon is is hit by an asteroid, the climate of the earth changes drastically leaving 16-year-old Miranda struggling for survival with her mother and two brothers. I've read lots of books with similar survival themes, but there's somethings about Life As We Knew It that's quite different. This book is incredibly realistic. As I've watched gas prices sky rocket this summer along with the prices of food and nearly everything else, I kept thinking about this book. Fortunately, we seem to have hope that things will get better, but as I watched Miranda's situation, I felt that she had no hope. Cities and continents were disappearing so there was little assistance for her. A heavy feeling of hopelessness hung over me during much of this, and I kept wondering how the author was going to resolve it.

Towards the end of the book, Miranda really begins to lose hope. She says, "My world keeps getting smaller and smaller. . . . . I feel myself shriveling along with my world, getting smaller and harder." So many of us have felt this way when we desperately wanted to be somepleace else and felt there was no escape. Susan Beth Pfeffer has done a great job here with a book that is sure to be a classic and one that teaches us to never give up hope.