LIFE AS WE KNEW IT, BY SUSAN BETH PFEFFER
Sat., May 25, 10:08 AM
When I checked this book out, the clerk warned me, “You realize that’s a young adult book?” I knew; I just thought it looked interesting. (I try not to keep my brain in a box.) And then he told me that he had read it, and it was surprisingly good. Yes, it is.
Life as We Knew It is the journal of a high school sophomore, living a normal life when something happens to change the world. I wouldn’t call it an apocalypse story as much as a normal family’s reaction to what happens, as bad as it is.
Oh, yes, it is bad. An heavy asteroid hits the moon and changes its orbit… What if? Well, for starters, there are worldwide tsunami. Miranda lives with her mother and brothers in Pennsylvania, no near the shore. But electricity and phones are no longer reliable, gasoline is $10 a gallon and going up. Whenever they think it’s as bad as it can be, it gets worse.
[Compulsively, I wondered what is the plural of tsunami, because it’s not an English word. I have reference books, too old to help. As it turns out, the plural can be written with or without the s.]
Cutting trees for firewood and collecting kindling, rationing food and water, and some creative planning by Mom helps keep them together. A radio broadcast (before radio disappears) from the President at his home in Texas: “He’s an idiot,” says Mom. They persevere.
The weather gets colder, and there is a lot of snow. Well, they have wood to burn and melt the snow for water. A wave of flu wipes out much of the surrounding population; of her own family, only Miranda is immune. But they have aspirin and fluids, and she saves them.
The journal entries cover from spring — just before the end of school — to the beginning of spring the following year. I thought this might be a story without an ending, and though we know they survived that year, it still is open-ended. After all, someone may figure out how to progress with what they have, but no one can put the moon back.
Susan Beth Pfeffer is a prolific author of children’s and young adult books; I never had occasion to pick up one of her books before. I can see this going into a series, which is the marketing style now. (On looking into it, I find that it is a series. Ahem.)
Life as We Knew It may not be science fiction by definition, but it certainly is speculative fiction. I appreciate the handling of the interfamily relationships (they seem real), and I didn’t notice any flagrant science errors. Yes, I liked this book.
Young adult books, as a genre, have evolved over the last sixty years or so. The ones I read as a ten-year-old — my friends and I were considered advanced readers — were little more than romances with some kind of background that was considered educational. Of course, I read all the Sue Barton books, for I was going to be a nurse. I followed Sue from student nurse all the way to “neighborhood nurse,” aka stay-at-home mom. Sue Barton, Staff Nurse actually approached pertinent information; Sue had to go back to work when her husband became ill. Don’t forget, little girl, you may need that training someday.
I found myself really interested in books by Adele DeLeeuw, who is now remembered as a writer of children’s books. I learned a lot from her stories, and I was pleased to learn that she bequeathed a large amount of money for scholarships in her community. Amazing, isn’t it — she died before I was out of high school.
After I finished college and went back to work in the public library, it had just opened a Young Adult Section, with its own YA librarian. Oh, wow! Girls would no longer have to depend on the children’s room. Right? Not so right. I would read an adult book that seemed appropriate for high school kids and recommend it to the YA librarian. But she never added a title that wasn’t specifically marketed as a young adult book. There was nothing to stretch a young person’s or imagination.
When my daughters, really early readers, were about fourth or fifth grade, the big rage was Judy Blume. I tried those but didn’t care for Blume’s children’s books, and her adult novels were even worse. The U.D. read Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret before she was old enough to understand what all the characters were waiting for. She asked me, and I explained — not only what she would see, but what was happening inside her. Her reaction was, “I thought it was something important; all it is, is blood.” When I was ten, we didn’t talk about it at all; progress seems to be talking about it from the wrong aspect.
That was the point at which I decided to offer my kids selected adult books. Lots of biographies: Anne Frank, Eleanor Roosevelt. Novels like To Kill a Mockingbird. My son liked science fiction. They’re still readers. That YA librarian may have had an LS degree, but I think my methods were better.
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