Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer is a science fiction post-apocalyptic book about a young girl Miranda. Miranda is your average teenage girl, with decent grades, and a few friends, when all of a sudden media predicts that an asteroid will crash into the moon. When the time comes to watch this event, the asteroid smashes into the moon so hard it causes the moon to leave its orbit, coming closer to Earth and intensifying the tides. After the impact, natural disasters began to break out at rapid rates, tsunamis flooding from coast to coast decimating the homes standing in their way, and earthquakes killing millions of people. Miranda and her family must survive without food and water and battle the harsh winter without electricity. Miranda has to find a way to persevere through this endeavor as many of her beloved friends die and school comes to a close for good. She must deal with the physical pain of starvation and the social deficit of being trapped in her house without contact with her dad or friends. Many months pass and Miranda and her family come close to starvation. She ventures into the desolate town, expecting to die in the frigid winter, and instead finds volunteers handing out enough bags of supplies to keep her family satiated for a surplus of weeks. Miranda realizes the true meaning of being privileged and learns to appreciate the little things like family. Overall this book is a 3 out of 5 because it often had boring chapters that didn't necessarily bring any interesting ideas. The majority of the book was just Miranda venting about how she's worried about food supplies and the temperature dropping. It had some interesting topics such as romance, Miranda had a little relationship with a boy named Dan during the summer but then he eventually moved. It also touched on some graphic topics such as starvation as her religious friend Megan starved herself to death because God told her not to. But what was interesting was the story's overall message. I never realized how important the bare necessities such as electricity were. Miranda needed it to do laundry, cook, heat the house, and shower but couldn't when the companies stopped working. People, including myself, often take those everyday aspects for granted and never appreciate them until it is out of their grasp. In summary, Life As We Knew It is an average book, that provides an exciting topic of a natural disaster and emotional theme for readers.
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