The Dead and the Gone, Life as We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer

I stayed up way past my bedtime last night finishing The Dead and the Gone. (Hillview students may remember that this is the book about Alex Morales taking care of his younger sisters in New York City after his parents go missing in a world-wide climate catastrophe.) I'm sad to report that while it's really gripping, I didn't find it as involving as Life as We Knew It (the original story, about a girl and her family coping with the same tragedy in rural Pennsylvania). What Alex has to cope with to survive is certainly gruesome (looking for his mom in the morgue that was Yankees Stadium, searching the corpses that litter the streets for items to barter for food) and some scenes, especially those involving babies, made me want to cry. But he is much less introspective than Miranda (from the other book) was and I think that kept me at a distance. And though I had some uneasy dreams, it's nothing like the terror I felt for days after finishing Life as We Knew It. Your mileage may vary: I'm probably numbed to the gore from years of horror movies, and maybe less introspection is more your style. So don't let me keep you from trying this out - after all, I was compelled to lose sleep to finish!