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A review by zachswain
The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
adventurous
dark
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
BLUF: Well paced dystopian story about an isolated civilization, its degradation, and their discoveries about their origin.
I picked this up as my daughter has it on her 5th grade list of books for their school's book club. After reading it, I think middle school is probably a better target audience, but 5th graders will still take a lot away from it and enjoy the read. It's quick, relatively simple, with few advanced concepts or relationships, no romance, no violence, no scary scenes (one death from natural causes). Most conversations are completed within a few sentences.
The book is about as anodyne as you can get regarding a dystopian, post-apocalyptic society. Problems are "on the horizon", not here in the immediate, and nobody is suffering terribly. I think some of the concepts, such as the necessity of an isolated society forcing people into jobs at a young age, will be lost on middle schoolers, but it should be thought provoking and make for a good discussion topic. The same with the discovery ofcandles, matches, and the like...things that the main characters have never seen, heard of, or used before. It might be a difficult concept for a child to understand, especially one that has grown up in the age of the Internet, but should be a great lede for discussion.
I wish more time had been spent at the end on explanation of origin, but that's middle aged me having just read the first book of the Wool trilogy (I'd consider that a more mature version of City of Ember) which had several hundreds more pages in which to put exposition, conversation, and detail.
For what City of Ember set out to do, I think it accomplished it fairly well. Including the first chapter of the next book as a sort of epilogue was brilliant and got me wanting to read it as well.
I picked this up as my daughter has it on her 5th grade list of books for their school's book club. After reading it, I think middle school is probably a better target audience, but 5th graders will still take a lot away from it and enjoy the read. It's quick, relatively simple, with few advanced concepts or relationships, no romance, no violence, no scary scenes (one death from natural causes). Most conversations are completed within a few sentences.
The book is about as anodyne as you can get regarding a dystopian, post-apocalyptic society. Problems are "on the horizon", not here in the immediate, and nobody is suffering terribly. I think some of the concepts, such as the necessity of an isolated society forcing people into jobs at a young age, will be lost on middle schoolers, but it should be thought provoking and make for a good discussion topic. The same with the discovery of
I wish more time had been spent at the end on explanation of origin, but that's middle aged me having just read the first book of the Wool trilogy (I'd consider that a more mature version of City of Ember) which had several hundreds more pages in which to put exposition, conversation, and detail.
For what City of Ember set out to do, I think it accomplished it fairly well. Including the first chapter of the next book as a sort of epilogue was brilliant and got me wanting to read it as well.
Content Warnings
Minor: Death