The City of Ember (Jeanne DuPrau)

Genre: Children's literature
Year Published: 2003

The great dystopian children's novel is, of course, The Giver. I consider myself privileged to have been born at just the right time to read that when I was just the right age for it.

The City of Ember is similar to The Giver in many ways: in both cases, the reader is dealing with a futuristic civilization (that may or may not have been founded after some sort of apocalyptic event) that is utterly isolated and also idiosyncratic in its traditions and daily life. Both civilizations lack history, most arts, and non-human creatures. The main difference is that while The Giver is all about human life without humanity (e.g. love, sex, choice, death), The City of Ember is about human life without natural light.

If that sounds like a flimsy premise, reconsider: think about what life would be like if the only light we had access to was electric light. And Jeanne DuPrau does an excellent job of imagining a city without the sun: electric lights go on and off at preordained intervals; buildings are built low to the ground so as not to block light; anywhere outside Ember's boundaries is absolutely dark, and thus unpassable (as the people of Ember do not have "movable lights"). In the introduction to the book, we are told that 220 years after the city's founding, a box will open with instructions on how to leave the city. But within the first couple chapters, we know things have gone awry: 220 years have come and gone, the lights that create daylight are faltering, and food in Ember's storerooms is running low.

Of course, because this is a children's novel, it is two children who eventually find and believe in the instructions. And because it is children's literature, few of the grim possibilities imaginable in a city like Ember are carried out. But not everything is smooth sailing for Lina and Doon, our protagonists: as the city-dwellers' time is clearly running out, some of the more powerful adults in Ember take it upon themselves to get theirs while the getting is good -- utterly predictable, to an adult reader, but interesting to see through the children's naive eyes.

DuPrau excels in two things that very much helped this book: 1) the imagining and subsequent description of Ember, and 2) the creation of believable and evocative suspense. I often have a difficult time picturing places that are only described to me, but Ember was very clear in my mind as I read the book. And as Lina and Doon got closer to solving their puzzle, I was genuinely eager to know how all the problems were going to be resolved.

Certainly The City of Ember raises none of The Giver's existential questions, and its prose is nowhere near that level. But it's an enjoyable read, and I think that these kinds of books open up new avenues for kids' imaginations -- always a good thing.

Recommended? Yes. (Reading level: maybe third grade at the youngest, if they can get through a book with twentyish chapters, and seventh grade at the oldest, if they haven't already moved on to adult post-apocalyptic literature.)