What I'm Reading -- Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Fiction, Teen -- Pfeffer has created a novel that blends sci-fi and a coming of age story. 16-year old Miranda and the rest of the world watch as a meteor is expected to collide with the moon. What the experts did not prognosticate is that the moon gets pushed closer to the earth after the collision which throws off the balance of things and makes life horrible for everyone. As the world is seemingly coming to an end, Miranda writes about her experiences in her diary. Her musings are candid and seem very real. They range from her silly crush on an Olympic skater to deciding how to divvy up her family’s ever dwindling supply of food. I kind of had mixed feelings about this one. It is written clearly and with much emotion, but something about world ending novels just doesn’t click with me. I’m not sure what it is, but I seem to always doubt the author’s conclusions about how people would react, but this is probably just some of my own silly notions. Anyway, I think this is better than Meg Rosoff’s very similar How I Live Now. Fans of Rosoff will definitely like Pfeffer’s account of world changing events as well.