“Everyone thinks they have to save the world, but they have to save themselves first.”
Amina is a new student at the prestigious Gardner Academy. A scholarship student from the Boston area, her parents send her to the boarding school after an attack on their Temple leaves her with persistent nightmares and an unhealthy obsession with the specter of Fascism. She has no interest in leaving home, but once at Gardner she meets a group of like-minded students who also fear a coming crisis. Together they form the Eucalyptus Club and work together to prepare for such events as nuclear holocaust or government overthrow. But someone is targeting their group with malicious intent, and it will take all of them to find out who. In How to Pack for the End of the World, Michelle Falkoff mixes the mundane every day of high school (albeit an elite boarding school) with the very real existential dread that today’s youth must learn to cope with. The concerns of Eucalyptus are based in reality and while the games the students play may seem too direct at times, they will speak to a generation that is growing increasingly intent on speaking out before it is too late.
How to Pack for the End of the World by Michelle Falkoff (List Price: $17, HarperTeen, 9780062680266, 11/10/2020)
Reviewed by Faith Parke-Dodge, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina