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Note:  If you read both Life as We Knew It and the dead & the gone for the MMS Summer Reading Challenge, you will need to complete both STEAM activities for credit.

1. Time to Look Up:  learn more about asteroids.
· What is an asteroid?

· What are the 3 broad composition classes of asteroids?

· Name and describe the 3 asteroid classifications.

· Who discovered the first and largest asteroid?  What is its name?

Reliable reference source: NASA Science-Solar System Exploration: Small Bodies  https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/

2. The Sky Is Falling: Select, research and create a natural disaster

survival guide that would help teens like Miranda survive under

circumstances similar to those in the novel. What would you need  to sustain yourself and your family for an extended period of time include an emergency kit checklist with supplies and communication plan?

Reliable reference source: CDC: Natural Disasters and Severe Weather

https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/index.html

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1. Before the meteor strikes the moon, what are the biggest  concerns in Miranda’s life?  How do they change in the months that follow?

2. How would you describe Miranda’s relationship with her brothers, Matt and Jonny? How does this relationship change during the course of the story?

3. Why is Jonny being given more food than the other family members?

4. After Mrs. Nesbitt dies, Miranda goes through her kitchen cabinets and says doing so makes her “feel like a cannibal?” (p.240) Why does she feel this way?

5. On New Year’s Eve, Miranda wonders if people ever realize how precious life is. (p.287) What events have happened to Miranda’s life to remind her that life is precious?

6. What does Miranda give her mother for her birthday?

7. Near the end of the story, it is extremely important for Miranda to go to the post office. Why?

8. What do you think will become of Miranda and her family and friends?  Continue Miranda’s journal by writing 4 journal entries that describe what you think has happened to her, her family, and her friends.

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Everyone is excited about a once-in-a lifetime meteorological event that is about to occur. Half the world is about to witness the moon being struck by a large meteor. Just moments after the impact, people begin to notice that something is horrifically wrong. The moon has been thrown off its axis and the results will soon be catastrophic. Teenager Miranda tells of these events in a diary that moves the reader along on a doomsday journey. As everything changes in Miranda’s life, each entry she writes about is an account of her daily struggle to cope with desperate times. Each day is a day of hope, and each day is a little less like the life she once knew … and still, the worst is yet to come.

If you found out today that, due to a catastrophic event, the life you are familiar with will change dramatically, what is the first thing you would do?

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Read Life as We Knew It, answer the Discussion Questions using complete sentences, do 1 STEAM activity per book, and submit to your ELA Teacher the first week of school to earn 30 PBIS tickets and 30 minutes of recess.   If you read a second selection and complete activities for both, you will earn tickets and extra recess plus lunch away from school on a designated day.

Additional Incentive:  Students who complete the Summer Reading Challenge will be entered to win a gift certificate for 4 from Blue Heron Whitewater, French Broad Adventures, or  Sandy Bottom Trail Rides.  Special thanks to our generous sponsors.

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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 University; since then, she has been a full-time writer for young people.

She has won numerous awards and citations for her work, which range from picture books to middle-grade and young-adult novels, and include both contemporary and historical fiction.

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Summer Reading Challenge