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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Oct 2006, 352 pages
Paperback:
May 2008, 360 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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A meteor knocks the moon closer to the earth. How should Miranda's family prepare for the future?
Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when a meteor knocks the moon closer to the earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove. Told in journal entries, this is the heart-pounding story of Miranda’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.
one
May 7
Lisa is pregnant.
Dad called around 11 o’clock to let us know. Only Mom had already taken
Jonny to his baseball practice and of course Matt isn’t home from college
yet, so I was alone to get the big news.
“The baby is due in December,” Dad crowed, like he was the first guy in
the history of the world with a younger second wife about to have a baby.
“Isn’t that great! You’re going to have a little brother or sister. Of
course it’s too soon to tell what it’s going to be, but as soon as we know,
we’ll tell you. I wouldn’t mind another daughter myself. The first one I had
turned out so wonderfully. How’d you like a baby sister?”
I had no idea. “When did you find out?” I asked.
“Yesterday afternoon,” Dad said. “I would have called you right away but,
well, we celebrated. You can understand that, can’t you, honey? A little
private time for Lisa...
Miranda's diary entries record her changing viewpoint as her perspective shifts from self-centered adolescent angst, through anger and petulance, to eventual resignation in this challenging coming-of-age novel that has drawn comparisons to Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now and The Diary of Anne Frank. Recommended for teens aged 13+...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Susan Beth Pfeffer was born in New York City in 1948. She grew up in the city and its nearby suburbs and spent summers in the Catskill Mountains. When she was six her father wrote and published a book on constitutional law, and Pfeffer decided that she, too, wanted to be a writer. That year she wrote her first story, about the love between an Oreo cookie and a pair of scissors. However, it wasn't until 1970 that her first book, Just Morgan, was published. She wrote it during her last semester at New York ...
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