Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780375822742
ISBN number: 0375822747
Label: Random House
Manufacturer: Random House
Page Count: 270
Printing Date: 2003
Publishing house: Random House
Sale Popularity Level: 426748
Studio: Random House
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Rated by buyers 
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The City of Ember is written by Jeanne DuPrau and it was published in 2003. It was the the authors very first book and as a very first book I thought that it was a lot of fun to read. The book is meant for a younger audience because the heroes of the story are two young 12 year old children.
Ember is a large city in the middle of the dark. The only source of light for the city is the street lights. The street lights are turned on and off every day by the time keeper.
Everything in the city of Ember is warn out and and second-hand, everything but the food. The people in the city of Ember are able to grow limited amounts of food but most of their food is kept in the store houses. The store houses were filled with food in the past by the builders.
At the age of 12 all children are assigned a job to do. The jobs are assigned by drawing a the job title out of a hat. Lina wants to get the job of messenger. Doon wants to get a job working in the power stations of the city. When Lina draws out the job of pipe works and Doon gets the job of messenger.
Doon asks Lina to trade with him. He feels that pipe works is better than messenger at least it will get him closer to the power plant. Doon feels that if he can get into the power plant he can finally understand electricity. Electricity is one of the few things that he feels that he does not understand.
When Doon finally gets into the power plant he sees a loud coughing machine that he feels he will never understand.
As messenger Lina runs around the city delivering messages from one person to another.
The lights of Ember are no longer staying lit like they should. The power plant is getting run down. The lights of Ember are starting to go grey in the middle of the day and the citizens of Ember are frightened. Lina spends most of her day sending messages to people simply so they do not have to leave there homes and have to risk being put in the dark when the lights go out.
Lina's grandmother unearths an old parchment and that parchment ends up in the hands of Lina's baby sister. The baby sister plays with the parchment tearing and chewing it into little pieces. When Lina finds the paper in the hands of her baby sister it is unreadable. The only thing that she can tell is that it is written in the fine block print of the builders. She feels that the message is important.
Lina and Doon spend the rest of the book trying to solve the mysteries of the parchment. The other people that they show the parchment to don't seem to think that it is all that important. From what little they can make out of the document most people feel that it is simply some sort of cooking instructions or something.
While Lina and Doon are trying to solve the parchment, the city of Ember is slowly falling apart. The people of Ember know that something needs to be done but no one seems to know what needs to be done. Is the answer in the strange almost unreadable parchment?
This book is definitely written for a younger reader but I still really enjoyed it. I read the book in two days. I barely put it down the entire time I was reading. I even went on to read the very first part of "The Children of Spark" (second book in the series) that was in the back of the book. I later went out and bought the other three books that go with the city of Ember series. This book is great for a young reader and simply fun for an adult reader like myself.
Rated by buyers 
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I have just purchased this book, but the description sounds startlingly similar to Suzanne Martel's "The City Under Ground" -- which is the book I was looking for because I remember reading it back in the 70's and thought my kids would enjoy it now.
Martel's is out of print. I'll edit my star count after reading the book.
Rated by buyers -
Excellent way to share a story for a mini-study to students in the classroom without having to purchase a classroom set of books.
Rated by buyers -
An underground city...a book based on this concept can either be done very dull and single-faceted, or interesting and imaginitive. Thankfully, this book was the latter--full of imagination and a great ending that leads into the 2nd book, The People of Sparks. It was very hard to put down.
Rated by buyers -
I loved this book! Plain and simple - I loved it! From the minute I picked it up and read the introduction, I couldn't put this book down.
This book is appealing in so many ways, it has likeable characters - both Lina and Doon are normal kids but with noble spirits. It has a villain that is easy to hate - that horrible mayor! To top it all off there is a word puzzle that has to be solved to unravel the mystery of how to escape from Ember.
As an adult I thought the story was very entertaining, and I will definitely be sharing it with my son sometime soon. I can see the appeal of this book for the young adult audience, because the heroes of the book - the only ones who really know what's going on - are the kids.
Even though it is a book for young adults, it is so well written that I think people of all ages will enjoy it. I know that there were parts of the book where I had to force myself to slow down and enjoy the story, because I was so eager to find out what was going to happen to Lina and Doon that I wanted to race ahead.
I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone - it's great! Just plan on setting aside a couple of hours to read it, and don't plan on doing anything else. I know that once I started reading The City of Ember I didn't want anything to distract me from it.
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