Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that, while there's nothing graphic or particularly objectionable here, this book about a global disaster will be terrifying to some children, especially those without the experience to put it in context. Young readers may want to know more about their own family's readiness for disaster, and about the likelihood of these types of events occurring.
Families who read this book could discuss their own disaster plans, and what could be done to make them feel more ready. How can we stay safe and together in the event of an emergency? Where should we go? What emergency supplies do we have, and where are they kept? What is the likelihood of these types of events taking place? What are more likely scenarios that might cause this type of disruption to normal life? How would we cope with them? And the bigger questions raised here: How far would you go to survive? Would you share? Steal? Hoard? What happens to our humanity in the face of imminent extinction?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
This is one terrifying book, the more so because it's so concerned with the mundane -- food, water, heat. Told in journal form by Miranda, the big events all happen offstage, and Miranda only hears about them secondhand. Her life is all about immediate survival, and many readers may find themselves obsessing about their own readiness -- how much food is in the pantry, how would they cook it and keep warm in the absence of electricity, gas, or oil.
The author is very clever here: She has chosen a possible but very unlikely event (disruption of the Moon's orbit) as the catalyst for the story, thereby avoiding looking like a political screed and providing a little distance for those who need it. But the results of the Moon's change are all too similar to much more likely scenarios, such as global warming -- rising tides, weather and agricultural disruption, collapsing infrastructure, and energy failure -- and alert young readers won't fail to make the connection. This will be a terrific book for discussion groups.
But it would be best not to introduce it to younger children. Its very mundane realism, combined with a griping writing style, may scare them far more than monsters and ghosts, and be a lot harder to explain away as just fantasy. But for middle schoolers and up, it will be extremely thought-provoking -- maybe too much for comfort.
From The Book
But the moon wasn't a half moon anymore. It was tilted and wrong and a three-quarter moon and it got larger, way larger, large like a moon rising on the horizon, only it wasn't rising. It was smack in the middle of the sky, way too big, way too visible. You could see details on the craters even without the binoculars that before I'd seen with Matt's telescope.
... It was still our moon and it was still just a big dead rock in the sky, but it wasn't benign anymore. It was terrifying, and you could feel the panic swell all around us.
Plot Summary:
When a meteor crashes into the Moon, it knocks the Moon's orbit a bit closer to the Earth, causing tidal waves, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, which in turn wipes out coastal cities, disrupts infrastructure and weather patterns, and causes crop failure.
Teenaged Miranda, who lives with her mother and brothers in Pennsylvania, doesn't directly witness most of this, but she feels the effects: Her family must try to survive on hoarded canned food and a woodstove when power and communications fail, there is no food in stores, temperatures plummet, the sun is blocked by volcanic ash, and disease ravages the surviving population.
Related Books:
Other Books by Susan Beth Pfeffer:
Family of Strangers
Twice Taken
The Trouble with Wishes
Surviving Disaster:
The Devil's Children by Peter Dickinson
Weather Eye by Lesley Howarth
Earthquake Terror by Peg Kehret
The Green Book by Jill Paton Walsh
Shade's Children by Garth Nix
Among the Hidden: Shadow Children, Book 1 by Margaret Peterson Haddix
The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick
The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
Into the Firestorm: A Novel of San Francisco, 1906 by Deborah Hopkinson
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Sexual ContentSome kissing, mention of a period, discussion of when to have sex. A teen girl takes up with an older man. |
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ViolenceA parent commits suicide after her daughter dies. |
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CommercialismFast food and candy brands. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoWine drinking. |
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