Children's Lit -- The City of Ember

One of my resolutions for winter was to read more. I had developed a habit of non-reading during my years of teaching English for two reasons: 1) I had to read the curricular novels year after year to be sharp for classroom interaction, and 2) I had to read so many essays and papers that reading for pleasure just wasn't enjoyable anymore.

So I have recently read _Giants in the Earth_ by O.E. Rolvaag (highly recommended) and this morning I finished _The City of Ember_ by Jeanne DePrau.

The City of Ember reminds me a little of The Giver without the deeply dystopian tragedy raging inside. Ember is a dying city. It has a continuously black sky, faltering generator, and flickering electrical lights. It also has a corrupt mayor and a rapidly diminishing storeroom.

The story opens with Lina and Doon, 12-year-old friends who are about to receive their adult assignments. Lina receives Pipeworks laborer, and Doon receives messenger. Doon, a thoughtful boy who fears for the future of the city, asks Lina if she will switch jobs with him because he believes the cure for the city is under the city... somewhere in Pipeworks. Down there is the generator, the source of Ember's electrical power. Lina happily agrees, since Pipeworks is damp, smelly, and dangerous. She enjoys running, and knows that "messenger" is a great job for her.

You have to wait until the end of the book to find out why Ember exists, why the sky is always black, why the city is powered by a generator, and where the people came from. During the course of the book, Lina and Doon discover things that the Builders wanted people to discover... as long as they discovered it more than 200 years after the establishment of the city.

The City of Ember has some marvelously positive qualities. Our hero and heroine are very believable: slightly flawed, but still heroic. They are basically "good kids" confronted by extraordinarily difficult circumstances, and they respond in a magnificent fashion. The story itself is fast-paced and well-written, and answers a lot of its own potential difficulties at the end.

However, it is a post-millenial novel in a lot of ways. For example, no one in the book has an intact family. Lina has two dead parents and lives with an ailing grandmother and a baby sister. Doon has only a father and, as far as I could tell, no other family. By the beginning of the sequel, Doon has become the de facto leader of Ember's citizens at the age of 12. Some adults are good but every adult in leadership is to be distrusted. In that way it has taken on contemporary America's anti-authority mindset.

Another thing that find kind of intriguing but don't know how to take is the novel's treatment of religion/spirituality. There seem to be three sources of authority or transcendence. First is the government/leadership. The mayor leads the community and has guards to protect him. However, he is corrupt and shown to be foolish. The second is a group called the Believers. They tend to approach Ember's probably by gathering regularly and singing in public. They believe that the city's Builders will return and rescue them from their current predicament. I suspect that this is Ms. DuPrau's veiled poke at Christians, since we also sing and we believe that our Builder will one day come to rescue us. The third view, not really a group at all, is represented by Lina and Doon. They too come to distrust the government, and are not Believers, but by hard work and common sense break through the difficulties and arrive in a new world, a world that Lina had always dreamed of in a vague way in her imagination.

I think I would encourage my child to read The City of Ember, but would ask worldview questions and discuss the ideas presented within. If you've read it, please leave me a comment detailing your reactions.