Miranda lives in a small Pennsylvania town where potential prom dates rule thoughts of spring. That and the fact that her best friend Megan is undergoing some “born again” alterations in her lifestyle and mindset are enough to occupy Miranda without TV news warnings of a potential asteroid strike.
Heavens above, an asteroid strike on earth?! No, silly, on the moon, no need to worry. Still, a certain frisson of fear ripples through her family as they stand outside one night, awaiting the event that will forever change Life As We Knew It. The asteroid actually knocks the moon a tad off its axis, thereby causing cataclysmic damage to earth: tsunamis destroy coastal areas, and earthquakes and volcanoes inflict damage beyond belief, the worst being clouds of ash which produce the dreaded effects of a nuclear winter.
What’s a girl to do? Susan Beth Pfeffer’s answer is what makes this story so appealing; she focuses on Miranda and her family, giving the Hollywood disaster scenes scant attention. Her quick-thinking mother enlists the aid of the children and their older neighbor, Mrs. Nesbitt, to stock the house with food, batteries, candles and water. Her younger brother is sent home from baseball camp that summer when they run out of food. Other brother, Matt, chops the backyard trees into so much firewood that the family is pushed out of the downstairs living spaces into the sunroom with the wood stove. We watch her father and his new wife bravely drive west after a tearful family reunion. With no school and no transportation, Miranda tries ice skating on the pond until the polluted air forces her inside, ever inside into a tighter and more confining space. A virus strikes the family, already weakened as their food supply dwindles, but the local hospital has become a dead zone. And then, in what seems like the nick of time, Miranda courageously ventures into town through the piles of fallen snow.
Stop. Slow down a minute and follow the domino effect of little sunlight and no power for electricity, water, and heat. No hints here; just think about it, all the way down the food chain….
If you’ve already read this, let me know if you think the story is plausible, and if there truly is a reason to be hopeful. What would YOU do?
(HHSLibrarian also podcasted on this title a while back.)
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1 comment:
this was one of the most amazing books i read in the past year - utterly and completely compelling. Even now, almost 10 months after I read it, I have a hard time catching my breath when I think about the descriptions of the air quality, the ice skating ... just really intense.
I think one of the reasons it struck me so is that it seemed all too plausible given our global warming and now food shortage problems, the end of oil, etc. Although none of those things would happen at the speed that the moon moving off orbit affected the earth, it seemed like it could ultimately lead to many of the same effects.
I thought long and hard about if I would survive given something like that, and I don't think I would - just given where I live (way too close to the ocean) and the fact that I can't keep toilet paper in my house on a regular basis, let alone how SMART miranda's mom was in stocking up, what she stocked up, etc. I really respected her character and the sacrifices she made.
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