Zach+B.

 LIFE AS WE KNEW IT

**Memorable Passages**

"It's funny how sorry I feel for Jon these days. I'm 2 1/2 years older than him and I feel like I got those 2 1/2 years to go to school and swim and have friends and he got cheated out of them. And maybe he'll live 2 1/2 years longer than me, or 20 years or 50, but he'll still never have those 2 1/2 years of normal life."

This pasage from the book was Miranda thinking to herself one day that how unfair all of this is to her younger brother Jonny, because she has had more time to experience life even 2 1/2 years of having a 'normal' life where the world is not ending. It really shows how much she cares about her brother and the rest of her family, because she is thinking about how his life was so much more terrible for Jonny than her. This quote proves that underneath it all the terror, fear, and saddness Mirnada holds on to her hope that the world might actually come back somewhat normal (but as stated not completely normal). That hope might not even be placed upon her life but the life of her brother, which I think is completely brave, giving, and super selfless. This quote really shows Miranda's character, but this isn't even the nicest thing she says and isn't the nicest thing she does for her family either.

"Matt’s always been the one to explain things to me. Mom had her writing and Jonny, and Dad was at work (for as long as he was here), so Matt was the one I turned to. I don’t think he’s psychic and maybe it’s just because he’s three years older than me, but whenever I’ve had a question he’s seemed to know the answer."

This passage really shows again how close Miranda is with her family (other than her father) and how close they all to her. As you read they really are a strong bonded family after they go through all of the horrible things they went through together. Matt is the eldest child who is in college and also the man of the house since their father left, so he is bestowed with an enormous amount of pressure and responsibility that Matt has to deal with especially in this tremendous catastrophe. Miranda really relies on Matt which I'm sure adds even more pressure, but I'm sure he doesn't mind because he is a good brother to his siblings. This passage also shows that he is incredibly smart, so he is also resourcful and both of those attributes contribute to their survival in the end of the story. I know that if the family didn't have Matt and his cuningness they definately would not have survived.

"'I went to the bank this morning,' Mom said. 'And I filled the gas tank and gas was already at five dollars a gallon. I went to the supermarket and the electricity went out and there was chaos there, so they just said a hundred dollars for each wagon no matter what was in it. I had a lot of cash on me, so I filled a wagon and then I went back and got Mrs. Nesbitt and then Jonny and you so we could get wagons to fill.'"

This passage was written near the beggining of the book when the astroid just recently crashed into the moon in fact it was the day after it happened. This passage really sets up the whole book for the terrible things yet to come in the near future. But it also show the absoulte craziness that was going to come, that hadn't already come. The pure coincidence of Miranda's mother getting all that money that day was almost unbielivable even in a fiction. Them getting to the supermarket and having the money to get food and other neccessities was again another reason they survived through it all. So this book was a very 'the path you take would show you if you would survive' kind of book. The pure insanity after a day of the moon coming closer to earth absouletly astounded me. Also this passage shows that the family is very close to Mrs. Nesbitt which contributed to the family's survival by just knowing and having her in their family.

**Quotes/Reviews**

"Pfeffer tones down the terror, but otherwise crafts a frighteningly plausible account of the local effects of a near-future worldwide catastrophe. The prospect of an asteroid hitting the Moon is just a mildly interesting news item to Pennsylvania teenager Miranda, for whom a date for the prom and the personality changes in her born-again friend, Megan, are more immediate concerns. Her priorities undergo a radical change, however, when that collision shifts the Moon into a closer orbit, causing violent earthquakes, massive tsunamis, millions of deaths, and an upsurge in volcanism. Thanks to frantic preparations by her quick-thinking mother, Miranda's family is in better shape than many as utilities and public services break down in stages, wild storms bring extremes of temperature, and outbreaks of disease turn the hospital into a dead zone. In Miranda's day-by-day journal entries, however, Pfeffer keeps nearly all of the death and explicit violence offstage, focusing instead on the stresses of spending months huddled in increasingly confined quarters, watching supplies dwindle, and wondering whether there will be any future to make the effort worthwhile. The author provides a glimmer of hope at the end, but readers will still be left stunned and thoughtful. // –John Peters, New York Public Library" //

**Children's Literature** "This novel goes far beyond the expectations of a sci-fi novel, and the reader will not be disappointed in the ending."

"In this new novel "Life As We Knew It" by Susan Beth Pfeffer, the author of the highly regarded "The Year Without Michael" and many other books, a cataclysmic astronomical event threatens the very existence of the world and all of humankind. An event like this is too immense to imagine in any detail, but the story is told from the point of view of one 16 year old girl living in Pennsylvania, and the apocalyptic event is viewed from the perspective of one person in this seemingly isolated corner of the world.

Miranda begins her diary entries with the usual teen business of school, friends and family with a little digression into figure skating fandom. The forecast collision between asteroid and moon seems like a fun event, as well as an excuse for homework assignments from her teachers, in other words, of interest but not particularly interesting. But the unexpected happens and the collision knocks the moon out of its normal orbit around earth and terrible things begin to happen. Life as Miranda knew it changes quickly and relentlessly from one of normality to a frightening spectre of violent death and terrible deprivation. As suddenly as this happens in parts of world where tsunamis, earthquakes and floods wipe out huge areas of land and people, the changes in Miranda's world occur more gradually but relentlessly. Miranda's world becomes more and more focused on the tragedy and the effects of the global climactic change, and her frame of reference as a teen in a world of school, friends, sports and the future, shrinks down to the day to day survival of herself and her family of four. Miranda struggles to maintain her identity, her physical existence and her hope in the face of frightening odds against her.

The novel is a dark microcosmic view of a small town family facing the worst that life can throw at them, but it never loses hope even in the face of hopelessness. Miranda muses at one point in the book that she might as well enjoy today no matter how bad it is, because tomorrow was going to be worse. And yet there are little joys, rays of hope, tantalizing moments of what passes for normal in the midst of an ever darkening prognosis for survival. Miranda remains true to who she is and her family shows the strength of their commitment to each other throughout this ordeal.

There are no fairy tale endings to this book, but it does end on a hopeful note and the reader is left with the conviction that better days may yet be ahead. There are moments of humor as well as despair, moments of anger as well as love and a compelling story line that makes it hard to put the book down. Miranda's fate becomes a personal issue, we want to know what happens to her and her family and we care.

This is the author's best book to date, sure to be a classroom classic and popular with teens as well as an engrossing read for adults. Don't miss this one!"

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This video is an excerpt from school tube in which is somewhat a schools version a movie trailer. It had the main important parts of my book, and it summed most of my book up pretty well. It really gives out most of the beggining but not much of the ending parts. It shows some of the characters such as Miranda, her mother, Megan her friend and her other friend Sammi. It's a little dramatized and silly but it's the best that I found. This movie show what the characters call crazy shopping day and the emptiness of the pantry. The video also should somewhat of the drastic climate change such as the unberable coldness. I also thought the video really captured how life went from normal to choas very quickly. This video I do believe is a home-made creation from younger girl's points of view so for their age they displayed the beggining very well. The girls acting also captured their personality in a small way, such as Megan being very religous, and Miranda's mother being supportive yet also forceful in order to keep her family alive.



This picture shows that the moon has been hit by an astroid. After the moon was hit, it moved tremendously closer to Earth in turn causing three completely, powerful natural disasters. Those are the tides, earthquakes, and volcanoes. All of these freaks of nature was caused by the moons new powerful affect on Earth because of the moons gravity. The moon controls the tides as we all know and the gravity of the moon was so much more powerful that it cause tsunami-like tidal waves, that crushed and destroyed all of the cities and civilizations near the coast in every country. Also the moon's gravity also caused massive earthquakes that also killed a lot of people inland. Then the absolute craziest one was when the moon's gravitational pull actuall thrusted magma through dormat and active volcanoes and the Earth's crust. Then if the burning of people wasn't bad enough, the ash and smoke caused by the volcanoes put so much ash and smoke in teh atmosphere that sunlight couldn't penetrate to reach the plants. So then people died of starvation. Plus the air quaility was terrible so a lot of athsma people died also. The moon attacked the human population by sea, land, and air!



This picture is of complete blackness and emptiness. It represents how everyone in the world felt because they could only rely on themselves for any help anymore. It also represent the life quality of the human population because of the awful tragedies going on. Also this picture represents the aloneness Miranda felt all the time even though her entire family was shoved down her throat constantly, because she was never alone when they all had to live in the sunroom which was a little strange but I wasn't in that situation. The void and blackness show also that everything was running out like their food, water, hope, and their own lives. The color black means death which was happening everywhere, it happened to very close family-friends and probabloy almost half of the world's population. The family themselves also came very close to death, for the risk of running out of water, food, and sickness. But when you hold hope wiht you you can find hope or a light in the midst of despair and or darkness that surrounds you when you are in a horryifying time period. So perserve through it all and you will surive and thrive!