How I Live Now

http://smithsonianapa.org/bookdragon/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2013/02/How-I-Live-Now.jpg

Bibliographic data:  

Rosoff, Meg (2004).  How I Live Now.  New York: Wendy Lamb Books.

 Summary:   

Immediately upon arrival, fifteen year old Daisy feels more at home with her cousins in their English country cottage than she ever did living with her father and stepmother in New York City.  This sense of home is disrupted when, only days after arriving, a bomb goes off in London and launches the whole country into war.  At first, Daisy and her cousins see the war as an exciting event that frees them from parental supervision, however soon enough the effects are disrupting their lives and upturning their world.

Analysis:

Rosoff has written How I Life Now in an interesting style that subtly allows the reader to get deep inside Daisy’s head.  The occasional untraditional capitalization, emphasis and sentence structure make the narration feel like the mind of a teenager, helping the reader to have a greater empathy and understanding of Daisy’s world.  This style would appeal to teenage readers while pulling them into the story.

Daisy is a multidimensional character, making a few very questionable choices while overall being a very caring, thoughtful girl.  Daisy is anorexic.  While this is not a major theme in the novel, it comes up multiple times throughout the book.  She makes it very clear that not eating is a decision that she has made because that she enjoys the control it gives her and her thinness.  After moving to England, she becomes romantically and sexually involved with her first cousin Edward.  She knows that what she is doing is wrong, but explains that it feels right and good, and states that with the war it seems like their family connection isn’t important.  When the war tears her family apart, she become a mother figure to her nine-year-old cousin Piper, with Daisy making a conscience effort to keep Piper safe and shielded while separated from her brothers.  At the beginning of the novel, Daisy is very willing to be taken care of but by the end she works very hard to make sure she can take care of others.

All these decisions and actions make Daisy a very believable character.  Because of her flaws and strengths, young readers would be able to easily relate and connect with her.  Daisy has a variety of struggles throughout the novel that she is able to work through, such as her eating disorder and losing a loved one, which some teens would be able to sympathize with and learn from Daisy’s experiences.

While being over a decade old, the novel is very relevant to today.  Daisy’s struggles are fairly timeless (a disliked stepmother, feeling replaced by a younger sibling, feeling out of control of her own life) but the war that is occurring in the book is startling similar to the world of today, being described as

Snipers and small groups of rebels everywhere, disorganized bands of covert fighters and half the time you couldn’t tell the Good Guys from the Bad Guys and neither could they.  Buses blew up, and occasionally an office building or a post office or a school…You could ask a thousand people on seven continents what it was all about and you wouldn’t get the same answer twice; nobody really knew for sure but you could bet one or more of the following words would crop up: oil, money, land, sanctions, democracy. (176)

If police violence and ISIS were added to the causes of the war, it could easily be a description of the events of this summer.  While these parts of the war are barely described in the novel, knowing that the context of the war is so similar to our current world gives a great meaning to Daisy’s experiences. 

Activity:  

Many popular novels of today take place in a postapocalyptic future, showing the aftermath of a great war that ravaged the world.  How I Live Now tells the story of what life was like while the world became ravaged.  While Daisy’s story is nicely wrapped up, little is said about how the world around her was affected by the war.  Readers could write their own postapocalypic story explaining the effect of the war.  Alternatively, How I Live Now could be paired with a postapocalyptic book such as the Hunger Games.  Readers could write the story between the war Daisy experienced and the world Katniss lives in, developing the story to explain how the war caused the postapocalyptic world to develop. 

 Related Resources:

During the war, Daisy and her cousin Piper are taken far from their home.  When the war takes a turn for the worst, the girls attempt to return home on foot.  They spend over a week traveling on footpaths and riverbeds, eating berries, nuts and mushrooms that they find and sleeping under a plastic tarp.  Their ability to survive is due in part to a survival kit that was given to them. The following websites give instructions and supply lists for making survival kits.

American Red Cross.  Be Prepared for an Emergency.  Retrieved from http://www.redcross.org/get-help/prepare-for-emergencies/be-red-cross-ready/get-a-kit (accessed July 18, 2016)

Department of Homeland Security.  Basic Disaster Supplies Kit. Retrieved from https://www.ready.gov/kit (accessed July 18, 2016)

Blair, Patrick.  How to Make Your Own Pill Bottle Survival Kit. Retrieved from http://survivalathome.com/pill-bottle-survival-kit/ (accessed July 18, 2016)

Daisy naturally overcomes her eating disorder in the novel by realizing it is absurd for her to refuse food when people are dying of starvation.  Beyond an explanation that she doesn’t eat and she enjoys the control, little else is said about Daisy’s condition.  This website gives information about anorexia and shares information on treating the disease. 

National Eating Disorder Association.  Anorexia Nevosa.  Retrieved from https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/anorexia-nervosa (accessed July 18, 2016)

National Eating Disorder Association.  Treatment. Retrieved from https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/treatment (accessed July 18, 2016)

Published Review:

“A 15-year-old, contemporary urbanite named Daisy, sent to England to summer with relatives, falls in love with her aunt's "oldy worldy" farm and her soulful cousins--especially Edmond, with whom she forms "the world's most inappropriate case of sexual obsession." Matters veer in a startling direction when terrorists strike while Daisy's aunt is out of the country, war erupts, and soldiers divide the cousins by gender between two guardians. Determined to rejoin Edmond, Daisy and her youngest cousin embark upon a dangerous journey that brings them face to face with horrific violence and undreamt-of deprivation. Just prior to the hopeful conclusion, Rosoff introduces a jolting leap forward in time accompanied by an evocative graphic device that will undoubtedly spark lively discussions. As for the incestuous romance, Daisy and Edmond's separation for most of the novel and the obvious emotional sustenance Daisy draws from their bond sensitively shift the focus away from the relationship's implicit (and potentially discomfiting) physical dimension. More central to the potency of Rosoff's debut, though, is the ominous prognostication of what a third world war might look like, and the opportunity it provides for teens to imagine themselves, like Daisy, exhibiting courage and resilience in roles traditionally occupied by earlier generations.”

Mattson, Jennifer. (2004).  How I Live Now. n.p.: Booklist, 20o4. Book Index with Reviews, EBSCOhost (accessed July 17, 2016).

Z for Zachariah

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51rqbjzojiL._SX356_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Bibliographic data: 

O'Brien, R. C. (2002). Z for zachariah. New York: Simon Pulse.

Summary  

After a weeklong war, the United States has been ravaged by a nuclear holocaustic.  Everything and everyone is dead, with the exception of sixteen-year-old Ann Burden.  Thanks to an unusual weather pattern, the valley she calls home is unaffected by the radioactive fall out.  She believes she is the last person alive…until Mr. Loomis appears in a radioactive safe suit.

Analysis  

Written as if reading Ann’s diary, Z for Zachariah is an engaging page-turner.  Unlike many dystopian books, Ann does not focus on survival.  Her agricultural upbringing has taught her the skills needed to meet her physical needs.  The fact that she may be the only person left alive in the country doesn’t seem to upset her much, she is too busy working to survive.  The conflict in the story is the relationship between Ann and Mr. Loomis.

Ann’s behavior in the novel is mystifying.  To start, she is strong and independent.  She runs her family’s farm on her own, keeping herself not only alive but also thriving, for over a year.  Yet, when Mr. Loomis appears Ann seems incapable of standing up for herself.  Mr. Loomis begins to dictate how the farm will be run, at times forcefully preventing Ann from completing tasks.  Ann rarely questions Mr. Loomis and continues to care for him, determined to keep him alive.  Even after Mr. Loomis attempts to physically harm Ann and she decides to move into the hills to be away from him, she continues to ensure that he has adequate food and is well taken care of. 

This inability to standup for herself goes against everything that society is working to teach girls.  While on her own, Ann is strong but she immediately bows when a man appears.  This is frustrating to see, however it could be an extremely beneficial novel for young girls who are in similar situations.  Ann is able to justify her loyalties to Mr. Loomis, she justifies his behaviors even when, to the reader, his actions are irrepressible.   Young girls who are developing their inner strength may be able to see themselves or their situations in Ann. 

Z for Zachariah would be an interesting book for young adults who enjoy stories about dystopian futures.  It is old enough that it provides a different prospective, rather than zombies or authoritarian governments, it is a nuclear holocaust; rather than fighting to survive, it focuses on the interactions and mindset of the characters.  It would be an interesting choice to compare against popular novels of today, such as the Hunger Games or The Maze Runner. 

Activity  

In a world without budget constraints, it would be amazing to present the readers with an opportunity to experience some of the farm work that is discussed in the novel, particularly for urban teens.  This could be done through a series of guest speakers that can discuss and educate on crops and animals, a small garden could be setup at outside the library for students to tend to or a trip could be arranged to visit a working farm.  Readers could engage in the activities that Ann does, such as caring for chickens, milking cows and farming by hand. 

 Related Resources  

The video “Nuclear War’s Worst-case scenario” could be used to engage students before reading.  The book begins a year after nuclear weapons were dropped.  In this video, clips from a number of Cold War and films about nuclear weapons have been put together to replicate what would happen during a nuclear attack.  The video would set the scene for what the world around Ann would be like.

Cdcollura. (2012). Nuclear war's worst-case scenario (nobody wins). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRWzNIaVyBs

Ann survives the destruction around her by farming.  For many teens in America, farming is completely foreign.  The Farm School is exactly what it sounds like, a school where the subject is farming.  They offer a yearlong course for adults, 3-day field trips for students and summer camps for kids and teens.  For a large undertaking or for students who are particularly interested in Ann’s way of life, this could be a resource to gain an understanding of this skill set.  Additionally, they have a resource section of their website that students could utilize to learn more about agriculturally based life.

The farm school. Retrieved from http://farmschool.org/

Published Review

“Z is for Zachariah, the last name in fifteen-year-old Ann Burden's Bible school alphabet book; it's also for zero population after nuclear bombs and nerve gas seem to have destroyed everyone in the world except Ann in her Amish country valley (her family left it and seem singularly unregretted but then Ann is one of those unthinking practical types) who is making it alone with her brother's dog Faro, with their cow, chickens, the diminishing supplies from the store and her garden. Until a stranger comes over the hill in his plastic safe-suit -- he'd killed to get it; he has a bout of radiation sickness and almost dies but Ann brings him back to health only to face a lethal gratitude on his part. Mr. O'Brien wrote two juveniles as well as another genocidal thriller, A Report from Group 17. This is a little of each for both audiences and you'll find Ann's level resourcefulness as insulating as that safe-suit. So, less convincingly so, is her abz naivete in a day and age which has just come to an end.”

O'Brien, Robert C. 1975. Z for Zachariah. n.p.: Atheneum, 1975. Book Index with Reviews, EBSCOhost (accessed June 11, 2016).