November 12, 2014
I was pretty lucky in my first year of teaching. I had a very bright group of 7th graders (those kiddos would be juniors now, holy cow!) for language arts and reading. I was able to assign them many novels that year; some went over better than others, but overall I had fun teaching that group. They told me about a book they'd all been assigned as 6th graders that was generally popular, the very book I'm reviewing now. I've been meaning to read it for that long.
I can see why this book would be good to use with middle schoolers: the plot is fast-paced, and there are many opportunities for kids to make inferences. Overall I found the book enjoyable; the plot is fairly standard in the dystopia genre, but I've written before about how I enjoy those kind of books generally, and teen readers tend to gravitate to them.
A negative Goodreads reviewer expressed disbelief that while all of the adults in Ember were helpless, two children had the gumption and the luck to find a way out of the underground city. This reviewer is obviously not familiar with YA literature. Kids outwitting adults is a very common theme, and considering the situation, and what I know of human nature, I don't find it unbelievable at all.
See, the people in Ember have no clue about anything. This was by design; about 250 years before the start of the story, 100 senior citizens and 100 babies were put in Ember to protect the human race. My guess is that they were put underground either in the 1960s, or in modern times. There was fear that wars or disaster would wipe out the human race. These select people are meant to start a new society, living in this city that has been build and wired and stocked for their survival. They are dependent on electricity; nothing can grow, and no one can see, without the artificial light. People in Ember were meant to be ignorant of the world above ground until 220 years after the first people went in, so that they wouldn't leave early and like suffocate on noxious air or something.
People in Ember don't have books. They can't create anything new; they reuse everything again and again. They don't know about religion, or animals, or the sun and moon. They only know life in Ember, and they believe that theirs is the only city anywhere, and that all else is darkness.
It doesn't surprise me that Doon and Lina, the two main characters, have dreamt of light. I mean, human beings all probably have a built-in instinct about sunlight and nature, and being stuck in darkness forever, the people in Ember would subconsciously crave to be outside. Biologically, they would need it.
The people in Ember don't seem especially unhappy about their circumstances...if the supplies weren't running out and the generator weren't breaking down. They've stayed longer than intended. To guard the secret of the city, the "Builders" of old had left instructions for how to get out of Ember with the mayor, and the locked box was meant to be passed from mayor to mayor until it opened by timer. The problem is that one mayor took the box home, attempted to break in, then shoved the box in a closet before he died. Oops.
Turns out that this mayor was a past relation of Lina's, and her grandmother, suffering from dementia, finds the box one day as she is going through all her things blindly. The lock has already opened, and Lina's beloved baby sister manages to eat and tear up the instructions before Lina discovers them. But Lina, with some help, is able to piece enough of the message back together that she and Doon can find a way out of Ember. And they're desperate to get away quickly: the current mayor has it in for them. When they were searching the Pipeworks, they find a door that, as Doon discovers, leads to the fatass mayor's secret horde of stuff stolen from the city's supplies. His refusal to act on Lina's tip about an exit just shows his fear and complacency in Ember. People don't like change, or the unknown.
The book ends when Lina sends a message down to Ember. She and Doon, having gotten out, realize that they never left clear instructions with anyone. So once they're above ground, and they've been dazzled by the beauty of the countryside they find themselves in, they look for another way to access Ember. They find a narrow cave that leads to an opening above a huge cavern, with the city right below. The book ends with Lina's kind guardian finding her note, which I imagine leads right into the sequel.
The only thing that irked me about this book was a couple of comments that might be interpreted as thinly-veiled religious messages. When Clary made her comment about something having had to create life, I had a bad feeling. I guess I find the idea of religious indoctrination of unsuspecting children to be distasteful. Then again, if The City of Ember is some sort of religious allegory for, like, seeking the light through the words of the creator or something, it's not terribly in your face about it. Hell, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is widely known to be an allegory for Jesus battling Satan or whatever, and it's a popular children's classic. Anyway, in our culture, I'd expect young readers to have questions about religion in this book. After all, they can't have Bibles, they can't know about seas and deserts and forests and boats.
More than anything, I find Ember to be a fascinating setting. I could see myself reading the next book in this series, perhaps if it's available at my school library. It's a quality children's novel, perhaps a kid's first introduction to the dystopian genre.
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