Life as We Knew it by Susan Pfeffer

It's almost the end of Miranda's sophomore year in high school, and her journal reflects the busy life of a typical teenager: conversations with friends, fights with mom, and fervent hopes for a driver's license. When Miranda first begins hearing the reports of a meteor on a collision course with the moon, it hardly seems worth a mention in her diary. But after the meteor hits, pushing the moon off its axis and causing worldwide earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, all the things Miranda used to take for granted begin to disappear. Food and gas shortages, along with extreme weather changes, come to her small Pennsylvania town; and Miranda's voice is by turns petulant, angry, and finally resigned, as her family is forced to make tough choices while they consider their increasingly limited options. Yet even as suspicious neighbors stockpile food in anticipation of a looming winter without heat or electricity, Miranda knows that that her future is still hers to decide even if life as she knew it is over.

I don't normally read disaster books but I stumbled upon this one and it was different from others that I had read. Written from the point of view of a 16 year old girl in diary format makes the reader feel like they are in a bubble of sorts. The reader is completely aware that the world is completely falling apart after a meteor has crashed into the moon but is only seeing it from Miranda. The book is so descriptive about the events going on in Miranda's life that you feel like you are living it with her. There is a sense of despair that the reader has that makes you feel like the world is ending and you have no power to stop it. There is a sense of foreboding that made me not want to turn the page for fear that something worse would happen and yet I could not put the book down. It is a bit of a heavy read and took me longer than a few of the other books that I have read in the past but I can see it being loved by boys and girls alike. The boys would love it for the disasters that are happening but the girls will love it because they can feel like they are in Miranda's place. I also liked the factor that even though the family is in hard times, Miranda still finds the time to act like a teenage girl every once in awhile. This is a book that I would recommend to all ages and not just the tweens because it is so well written and interesting.