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Book Details:
Book Title: How to Pack for the End of the World by
Michelle Falkoff
Category:
YA Fiction (Ages 13-17), 320 pages
Genre:
Literary / Mystery
Publisher:
HarperCollins (HarperTeen)
Release date:
Nov 20, 2020
Format available for review: Print, NetGalley
Download (mobi for kindle, epub, pdf)
Will send print books out: USA and Canada
Tour dates: Nov 3 to Nov 23, 2020
Content Rating:
PG-13. Language is clean, no sex on the page but reference to it, dark
subject matter--wasn't sure the best category based on descriptions.
Book Description:
If you knew the world was going to end tomorrow, what would you do? This is
the question that haunts Amina as she watches new and horrible stories of
discord and crisis flash across the news every day. But when she starts at
prestigious Gardner Academy, Amina finds a group of like-minded peers to
join forces with—fast friends who dedicate their year to learning survival
skills from each other, before it’s too late. Still, as their prepper
knowledge multiplies, so do their regular high school problems, from
relationship drama to family issues to friend blow-ups. Juggling the two
parts of their lives forces Amina to ask another vital question: Is it worth
living in the hypothetical future if it’s at the expense of your actual
present?
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Guest Post
HOW TO PACK FOR THE END OF THE WORLD was the hardest to
write of all my books (it’s my fourth published novel, plus all the ones in
drawers, of course), and while there are lots of reasons why, the main one is
because the subject matter was so closely tied to everything going on in the
world right now. One of the biggest challenges was how to make a book about
teenagers who are afraid of the apocalypse be both realistic and fun to read
(and write). The strategy I chose was to turn everything into a game, each one
focusing on an end-of-the-world fear. Here are some of the games the characters
played:
1. Surviving a Blackout: one character was afraid of the
grid going down, which would mean no power and no internet. My intrepid group
of teens competed to see who could last longest when they were no longer
allowed to use electricity or their computers, despite being at school. (They
were allowed to use the school’s power but could not exercise any agency over
it.) How long do you think the winner lasted?
2. Mastering the Outside World: one character believed in
the importance of learning to live outdoors. His game involved learning about
how to camp and forage for food, and the characters need to come up with
ingredients for a fully-foraged meal, a la Michael Pollan. Needless to say,
they’re not quite at his level, and it’s always good to be careful about
mushrooms…
3. Thriving in a Post-Apocalyptic World: one character was
terrified of nuclear war, but it was less the idea of the war itself that was
scary but what would happen afterward. She worked on the assumption that
everyone who survived would have to stay indoors—kind of the opposite of the
previous game—and challenged the group to come up with ways to do better than
just surviving. They had to decorate hidden spaces at the school and come up
with creative party ideas, in the hope that surviving was just the beginning of
a new, and maybe better, life. What would your post-end-of-the-world party look
like?
There are a couple of additional games in the book, plus a
bunch that I toyed around with that never made it in there, but I found that
thinking about these dark and difficult things with an eye toward how to make
them almost playful allowed me to have some balance. And it felt realistic,
too—even when things are hard, people tend to try to make the best of them, and
sadness and humor often go hand in hand. I hope you enjoy the book if you
choose to read it, and I hope its blend of realism and playfulness rings true
for you.
Meet the Author:
Michelle Falkoff is the author of Playlist for the Dead, Pushing Perfect,
Questions I Want to Ask You, and How to Pack for the End of the World. She
is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently serves as director
of communication and legal reasoning at Northwestern Pritzker School of
Law.
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Thank you so much for being part of the tour! I hope your readers enjoy the book!
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