Life As We Knew It

“Life As We Knew It” by Susan Beth Pfeffer Danielle Graves
What would I do? This is what I kept asking myself as I was reading “Life as We Knew It” by Susan Beth Pfeffer. The book follows Miranda and her family through their day-to-day struggles to survive the aftermath of a life-changing event. Astronomers miscalculate the density an asteroid that hits the moon, and it pushes the moon closer to Earth. The gravitational pull results in natural disasters that happen all over the world, not to mention grocery stores running out of food and gas going well over $10 a gallon. Although there is not a lot of action in the book, it is still compelling to read.
The story doesn’t take very long to start at all; it gets right into it in the second chapter. Because the story starts quick, the characters are introduced in a short time, but they are introduced well. In the first couple of paragraphs it gives you a little look into each character: “Lisa is pregnant… Mom has already taken Jonny to his baseball practice and of course Matt isn’t home from college yet…Dad crowed, like he was the first guy in history of the world with a younger second wife about to have a baby.” Near the end of the first chapter it talks about everyone in the neighbourhood getting ready to watch the asteroid, not knowing it was going to turn into something big. You wish you could tell the characters to pack up and run before things went wrong. When you are reading it you know what is going to happen, you just don’t know when.
The description of the event creates a visual in your head: “But the moon wasn’t a half moon anymore. It was tilted and wrong and a three quarter moon and it got larger, way larger, large like a moon rising on the horizon, only it wasn’t rising. It was smack in the middle of the sky, way too big, way too visible. You could see details on the craters even without the binoculars that before I’d seen with Matt’s telescope.” The way the character describes how it seemed to have happened makes you understand it better: “It wasn't like a big chunk of it flew off into space. It wasn’t like we could hear the sound of the impact, or even that the asteroid hit the moon dead center. It was like if you’re playing marbles and one marble hits another on its side and pushes it diagonally.” You can easily play out the whole event in your head as you read. It allows you to feel how nervous the characters feel.
The book made me think about our environment and how we take it for granted, because even though the moon isn't closer to Earth like in the book, the weather is changing because of global warming. And taking a moment to think about these changes, it's easy to think that we can go through the same things as Miranda and her family -“No one’s crops are doing well because there’s been no sunlight anywhere for over a month. Or rain, for that matter. So we’re all going to freeze and starve no matter where we live.” This book made me think about how unprepared we are for any sort of major emergency. It made me think about our depleting resources and the food we eat and waste, and what this will mean for our future.
You don’t realize how easy we have it. It’s the simple things - like having a grocery store, having a drink of water, and being able to wash your hair.This book shows what people are truly capable of. As the story progresses, things get worse and worse. That is what made me want to put the book down, but I really just had to know if things were going to get better. The end gave you something to hold on to; a glimmer of hope. This book shows how through love and determination, we can survive just about anything.