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Life as We Knew it by Susan Beth Pfeffer

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Off of Amazon's website:

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.


Despite being incredibly bleak, this book offers a ton of "food for thought" - you'll immediately ask yourself how you would behave in particular situations and compare your strategies for living with the rest of the characters in the book. Even though Miranda is a teenager, her actions and motivations are simply admirable and mature. I managed to read this book in a day and I really couldn't put it down.
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