Meg Rosoff's 2005 Michael L. Printz Award winning novel How I Live Now tells the story of 15-year-old Daisy who is sent from America to live with relatives in the English countryside. The story follows Daisy as she forms a romantic relationship with her cousin Edmund and experiences the horrors of war after a third world war breaks out. The book explores Daisy's coming of age and maturation as she is forced to confront the realities of violence, loss, and surviving in a war-torn environment. Through Daisy's unconventional narration, Rosoff examines themes of first love, independence, and coping with trauma and uncertainty in a brutal new world order.

2. 2005 Michael L. Printz Award Winner

4. From the onset, the unconventional writing style sets a discomforting tone, keeps the reader on edge and propels the story forward.

6. Illustrates protagonist’s growth as story progresses

7. Allows characters to determine their own destiny

8. Plot progresses quickly“Daisy’s account, in eccentrically punctuated run-on sentences, has a breathless directness, a mixture of urbane self-mockery and first-time wonder, that is utterly captivating.” Dierdra Baker of Horn Book Magazine (Baker 598)

10. Daisy suspects her stepmother of trying to poison her and has ceased eating.

11. Daisy’s father has sent her away under the pretense of hoping that Daisy can confront her eating disorder.

15. Isaac – Edmond’s twin; introspective and quiet; more interested in the farm animals

16. Aunt Penn – accepts Daisy unquestioninglyThere is an unusual telepathic connection between the family members; Daisy feels is also, but it is strongest with Edmond. Setting: Idyllic family farmhouse in an English countryside

17. HOOK

18. Rising Action BOMB! Daisy relates the account to the reader by saying that “something like seven or seventy thousand people got killed.” (Rosoff 24)

19. Rising Action Daisy and Edmond consciously reject social morals and give into pubescent instincts. The two cousins form a taboo and clandestine sexual relationship.

20. Rising Action

22. For the first time, Aunt Penn’s fate is questioned by the young characters. The reader senses a maturation not only in their relationship, but of the two characters individually as well.

23. Intensity of Daisy and Edmond’s relationship grows in a telepathic sense.

24. The two take on jobs:

25. Daisy – picking apples

27. CLIMAX Foreshadowed in a nightmare that Daisy has one night when she and Piper are camping near a river. Piper begins thrashing about in her sleep and as Daisy calms her down, she realizes that Piper, too, can hear the screaming in her head. Desperate and uncertain of the condition in which they would find the boys, the two press on urgently towards their destination. Then upon sighting birds circling overhead, they comprehend the presence of the foxes… “My first thought was that they were beautiful, sleek and well fed and vivid orangey red with sharp little intelligent faces and it didn’t occur to me till second thought to wonder why there were so many of them and why they didn’t run away. Well why would they. It was paradise. Dead things everywhere and when the stink hit you it was like nothing you ever smelled before and when you hear people say something smells like death trust them because that’s the only way to describe what it smells like, putrid and rotting and so foul your stomach tries to vault out through your throat and if your brain has any sense it wants to jump out of your skull and run away as fast as possible with or without the rest of you so it doesn’t ever have to find out what’s making that smell.” (Rosoff 140)

28. CLIMAX Daisy’s Transformation Daisy and Piper did not find what they were fearing, but that did little to settle them. The boys’ fate was still unknown. Daisy recognizes the task ahead of her and begins the awful task of trying to identify the decaying bodies. “One by one I approached the bodies, nice and methodical, saw how dead each one was and sometimes how young, and one by one each turned out not to be the person I most feared it would be.”(Rosoff 142) All the bodies looked as if they were fleeing from some unknown terror. When Piper finds her beloved goat dying in the barn along with nearly a hundred other dead and dying farm animals, it is Daisy who assumes the role of adult, covers him with a grain sack, and shoots him in the head. “We didn’t speak but I held Piper’s hand and told her over and over that I loved her through the blood beating in my veins and running down through my hand and into her fingers. Her hand started out limp and cold like a dead thing but I willed it back to life until after hours of walking the fingers started to grip mine, a little at first and then harder, and eventually I knew for sure it was still alive.” (Rosoff 144)

30. Daisy returns to England to find Piper a vibrant young woman, in love with a medical student.

31. Edmond, who witnessed the massacre suffers badly from post-traumatic stress disorder. He tends a garden that is filled with “Passion, maybe. And something else. Rage.” (Rosoff 181)

32. Format completely different

33. Begins with a new chapter 1.

34. Traditional punctuation and grammar is much less demanding on the senses and digesting Daisy’s words is effortless.

35. The reader is comforted by this straightforward text.

36. In this way, Rosoff reassures us that Daisy has acclimated with her world and is adjusting to adulthood.“Teens may feel that they have experienced a war themselves as they vicariously witness Daisy’s worst nightmares. Like the heroine, readers will emerge from the rubble much shaken, a little wiser and with perhaps a greater sense of humanity.” Publishers Weekly

38. She recognizes that by protecting and caring for Piper, she saved herself.

39. Tending not only to the plants alongside Edmond; she tends to Edmond himself.

42. Creates a timelessness to the work“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.” Jennifer Mattson, Booklist (Mackin)

43. Similar Works? Historical wars: Rooted in history Outcomes have been determined. Fictitious wars: Outside of reality Horror of war is buffered by fantasy. “I remember having an e-mail exchange with a friend in the US—she was saying, ‘Britain is going to follow America into war,” and I was saying, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Then it happened, and I thought, ‘This could be the beginning of a new kind of war.’” Meg Rosoff(Page 28) Uncertain post-9/11 world Effects of global warming

45. Acknowledging the cruel unfairness of life

46. Coping with brutal violence, terrorism and isolation

47. Relying on one’s self for survival

48. Being solely responsible for the life of another“The book is about loss, and the urgent need for love. It’s about the fact that violence leads to more violence, and war to more war. That we’re responsible for the people we care about. That deep human connections can repair a lot of emotional damage. That children are endowed with rare and subtle talents. That our faults are sometimes far more useful in life than our so-called ‘good’ qualities.” Meg Rosoff(Gale n.p.)

49. “After all this time, I know exactly where I belong. Here. With Edmond. And that’s how I live now.”(Rosoff 194)