D.O.A. Recommends Susan Beth Pfeffer

Just mouse over then drag your mouse to the right to see the rest of the toon! It rolls back and forth. I'm experimenting with cartooning as a way to feature books and authors. The cartoon above was created with Toondoo. This cartoon generator lets you select characters and conversation balloons and backgrounds and much more. This was my first try.

I just read The Dead & the Gone this week. It is a companion novel to Susan Beth Pfeffer's "Life as we knew it". Both books posit an asteroid hitting our moon and moving it in its orbit. The world changes immediately. While "Life as we knew it" takes place in a Pennsylvania town, The Dead & the Gone takes place in New York City. Seventeen year old Alex is suddenly responsible for his survival and that of his younger sisters when both of his parents meet unknown fates. He is such a great kid, but he resents having to make many of the choices forced on him.

I have always found post apocalyptic novels fascinating. They generally offer a chance for people to "start over", and to live more simply. That is part of their appeal, I think. In both of Pfeffer's novels, the immediacy of the disaster and its effects on individuals is so page turning. Instead of "how do we rebuild", it is "how do we stay alive one more day, and is it worth it, and right for us to do so?" Read "The Dead & the Gone" and "Life as we knew it" as soon as you can get ahold of them!

Added note: Susan has a poll up on her blog asking what people would like to see in a third book set in the same landscape as these. Go to Susan's blog, Meteors, Moons and Me to help her decide how to present the ongoing stories of our intrepid characters.