The People of Sparks (City of Ember Book 2)

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Lina acts as the reader's guide to understanding the history of this new world and how humanity fell into war as well as understanding the current geography and social structure. She undertakes a journey to one of the old cities in the hopes of finding something akin to the drawing she made in the first book. Instead, she finds disaster and learns about war, disease and destruction.

Because this is an industrial space it just comes alive, it’s so great. When I first scouted this place I’d just wander up the stairs and take flash images and look at them. But there’s so much you can work with. All the pipes you just walked through are all us, but large parts of this were here.” Holden, Stephen (October 10, 2008). "Fleeing a Dying Civilization, Toward Hope and Sunlight". The New York Times. New York. p.C10. Lina and Doon escaped the dying city of Ember and led their people to the town of Sparks. But it’s winter now, and the harsh realities of their new world have begun to set in. When Doon finds a book that hints at an important, long-lost device, it doesn’t take much for him to convince Lina to join him for one last adventure in the place they used to call home. But will this mysterious technology be enough to help their people? And what— and who—will they find when they return? I found a lot of the build-up of conflict (to set the stage for the peace message) between the People of Ember and People of Sparks pretty dull. Still, it's decent for fans who want more of Lina and Doon--and it provides some mind-flipping concepts for the upper elementary set, which is fun.Enjoyable book, though not as good as the first. I did like watching the people of Ember encounter the outside world for the first time, but I didn’t really feel the tension between the two groups. It seemed like a somewhat lifeless conflict. And it just kept going. We were just reading the same thing over and over again. Yes, they are not getting along; let’s get to the point please. The audio narration is pretty good, if old-school. The most annoying thing was the way the mayor’s dialogue would pause every three words for the super-fat mayor to catch his breath.

Lina determines, then, to decode the paper’s message, filling in its broken and missing words. Lina enlists the help of Doon Harrow, a friend and former schoolmate who now works in the underground labyrinth of Ember’s Pipeworks and who shares her passion for saving the city. With assistance from Lina’s friend, Clary, who works in the city’s greenhouses, the two soon see that the message contains a seven-step list of instructions for exiting Ember. Its point of egress, they ultimately discover, is in the Pipeworks and its source, a raging underground river that powers the city’s failing generator. Their curiosity and determination also lead them to hidden rooms, hollowed out along the river’s edge and filled with matches, candles, and boats for all of Ember’s citizens to escape. It’s not all completely fake either. There are one or two pieces of heavy equipment that were left over from the shipwright days that they didn’t bother to move, just incorporated into the design of the generator, the most prominent being a giant red boxy-type thing who’s original purpose I couldn’t begin to guess at. There’s also quite a lot of water all over the floor, causing several of us to slip, as they test their man made pool. It unfortunately keeps us from getting too close to the set itself. All we can really get a good look at is the top of what eventually will be giant wheel, one of two that use the flow of the river to turn the generator’s great turbines. Lina and Doon have led the citizens of Ember to an exciting new world. They’ve been given safe haven in a small village called Sparks, a place filled with color and life. But they’re not out of danger yet. Although Sparks seems like the answer the long-suffering Emberites have been hoping for, tempers soon escalate. The villagers have never had to share their world before, and it only takes a tiny “spark” to ignite a battle between the two struggling groups. Lina and Doon will have to work together to avoid a disaster not only for their people, but also for the people of Sparks. Jeanne DuPrau doesn't write every minute of every day. She also putters around in her garden. She lives in California, where it's easy to grow everything from apples to zinnias. Many readers have noticed the odd references in this book about religion. Side characters are heard wondering if there is a great Being watching over them and saying maybe or maybe not. Doon also wonders where life comes from and knows it’s a power greater than the Builders. The Believers are a group of people that aren’t in the book very much but do have the most “beliefs” of anyone. They claim to have seen the Builders coming again to “show them the way” in a dream. Now of course, in the story Lina and Doon save the day and the Builders are nowhere to be seen which is a great case for humanism, isn’t it? Except...the Builders did save them. Who wrote the instructions? Left the boats? The candles? And later in the series a few more surprises? I think it’s positing an interaction between their own efforts and what has been provided for them. It’s really not a huge theme of the book, but I would recommend some parental guidance for younger readers who are not strong in what they believe.Jeanne DuPrau spends several hours of every day at her computer, thinking up sentences. She has this quote taped to her wall: "A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people" (Thomas Mann). Maybe it can be stopped at the beginning," Maddy said. "If someone sees what's happening and is brave enough to reverse the direction." Unfortunately we can’t look around the building itself too much, we just have enough time to be herded into the Titanic art department room. It’s a brilliant old room. Because they were working in the days when getting a lot of incandescent lighting in one place was difficult and expensive, the art room is actually it’s own tiny wing protruding from the building stretching up almost two stories, with huge bay windows at one end and sky lights along the great curved roof, all to let in as much sunlight as possible for the engineers and designers to work by. Like everything else here it’s wonderfully decorated, with delicate molding on the columns and along the walls and ceiling. It’s hard to believe anyone ever went to this much trouble for what is essentially a drafting office. Nowadays its just cubicles and drawing tables. The building itself is now a historical landmark. Placed along the skylights themselves are various blown up photos of the construction of Titanic, reminding everyone why the building is there and what this room was originally used for. This is where the Titanic and her sister ships were dreamed up. Omigosh. What first hooked me were the vivid character descriptions that show more than tell, so the reader can draw their own conclusions. The story is told in third person, limited in two different perspectives. Lina Mayfleet, twelve years old, sat "winding a strand of her long, dark hair around her finger, winding and unwinding it again and again." Doon Harrow, also twelve, "sat with his shoulder's hunched, his eyes aqueezed shut in concentration, and his hands clasped tightly together." The City of Ember is an engaging children's fiction novel that introduces young readers to courageous characters who take steps to make change happen. The author Jeanne DuPrau writes age-appropriate fantasy/dystopia with mystery, action, adventure, and an exciting cliffhanger that keeps kids interested in the series. My son absolutely LOVES this book! Loves it so much he doesn't want to watch the film adaption for fear of ruining his reading experience (he has learned this lesson early in life LOL). As soon as he finished reading his library copy, he took his allowance money to buy the book so he can own it (I'm SOOOOO proud!). I read this book along with him and I have to say it was pretty good! If you have a young person in your care that needs some reading recommendations, offer this title for them to consider! It is the first of four books so it should keep readers busy for a while.

But it's also the most satisfying thing she knows how to do. So she keeps doing it. So far, she has written four novels, six books of nonfiction, and quite a few essays and stories. Someone uses mud to write hostile things about the people of Ember on the plaza and on the wall of the hotel. Someone also dumps a bunch of mud, garbage, and leaves in the hotel which causes the people of Ember to get terrible, itchy rashes after they clean it up. It turns out that the person who did these things was one of Ember's own people who was intentionally trying to increase hostilities so he could lead an army and get glory for himself in the war he intentionally tried to start. Because this is a dystopian series, it is repeated that the modern world was destroyed in some sort of disaster many years ago. Lina learns that the Disaster was a combination of events: several plagues and then some wars caused by leaders of the separate nations. Jeanne DuPrau.com: Coming this year! The City of Ember: The Graphic Novel!" . Retrieved February 24, 2012. I am sort of a late-comer with Young Adult novels. I blame it on my age. When I was a teenager in the 60s there was no real level between children and adult literature. Teen literature was a bit of a no man's land. I didn't realize there might actually be real literature in YA until I read the Harry Potter series. Since then, I've dabble a bit with the genre and discovered some gems: The Hunger Games series, Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, and Dan Wells' John Wayne Cleaver series. Of course there are plenty of duds too (Hello, Twilight!). Yet I am more willing to explore in this field than I was before.

It's interesting/worthwhile to have a children's adventure (even if its a dull-adventure) book deal with corrupt government (C.o.E.), an amorphic Disaster, war and peace, and, to a degree, socialism... When an unspecified global catastrophe looms, an underground city known as Ember is constructed to shelter a large group of survivors. In addition, a small metal box intended for a future generation of Emberites is timed to open after 200 years. This box is entrusted to the Mayor of the City of Ember, and each Mayor passes it on to their successor. When the seventh Mayor dies suddenly, the succession is broken, and over time, the box's significance is forgotten. The box opens by itself at the allotted time, but it goes unnoticed. Several decades later, Ember's generator begins to fail, and food, medicine and other necessities are in dangerously short supply. At a rite of passage event for all graduating students of Ember City School, Mayor Cole stands before the students as their adult occupations are assigned by lottery. Doon Harrow, the son of inventor and repairman Loris Harrow, is assigned "Messenger" while his classmate Lina Mayfleet is assigned "Pipeworks". Shortly afterwards, the two secretly exchange assignments and Doon is apprenticed to the elderly technician Sul. At home, Lina (a descendant of the seventh Mayor) finds the opened box and enlists Doon's help to decipher its contents. Gradually, they learn that it contains a set of instructions and directions for an exit from the city in the pipeworks.