Before there was Ember…there was Yonwood. Discover the prophecy that started it all in this prequel to the The City of Ember—a modern-day classic with over 4 MILLION copies sold!

Hunter, Allan (October 10, 2008). "City of Ember". Screen International . Retrieved September 14, 2021. 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. DuPrau makes a typical first-time novelist mistake throughout this book: she doesn’t trust her reader to infer. In other words, she often over-explains, following up dialogue and action sequences with redundant descriptions of a character’s take on what just happened. Another disappointment is that the mystery of Ember unfolds in an entirely predictable manner. There are no great surprises. I asked my best friend what kinds of books his children were reading (I'm always looking for books for my niece) and he said his oldest son had read and enjoyed the City of Ember series. So much so that he'd passed them along to his parents, who had read them and found them interesting as well. Add to it a movie coming out and I decided I would give the series a try.In between each take the clang of hammers takes up the silence, relenting only for the jarring alarm that warns filming is underway. That’s usually the way it is with films in production, with sets being built up to the last minute (there are about three weeks of filming left), and City of Ember is no exception. The real question is where they’re going to put it as the city seems to use up every square inch of the gargantuan stage. I got to read this book aloud to my youngest sister and introduce her to the world of Ember. She's a fan. ;) Just when the future looks bright for the people of Ember, a new darkness lurks. This highly acclaimed adventure series is a modern-day classic—with over 4 MILLION copies sold! He wasn't just flipping through a picture book, either. He was actually reading it. A book with all words and no pictures. Best quote(s): “The trouble with anger is, it gets hold of you. And then you aren't the master of yourself anymore. Anger is. And when anger is the boss, you get unintended consequences.”

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. I loved some of the new characters (like Maddy) and loathed some others (which was intended by the author), and of course still loved Lina and Doon. I thought the author did a good job developing our two main characters as they interacted with the new world. They were still themselves as well as retaining realistic teenage characteristics, but grew and changed into better people. There were actually fairly few characters who didn't grow and change in some way, even if some individuals grew less than others. The People of Sparks is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Jeanne DuPrau, published in 2004. It is the second "Book of Ember" in the series, and a sequel to The City of Ember; other books in the series include The Prophet of Yonwood and The Diamond of Darkhold. I found The People of Sparks, the second book in the Book of Ember series, to be an even stronger book than its predecessor. Author Jeanne DuPrau’s use of imagery and character development seemed more engaging this time around, and while the first book probably had a more compelling plot for younger readers, this sequel did a better job of wrestling with big questions about human nature. A pesar de que me encanta el romance en los libros me parece que mientras una historia posea estas dos características es un libro que vale la pena leer.Chang, Justin (October 13, 2008). "Eye-popping 'Ember' burns out". Variety. New York: Penske Business Media. 412 (9): 39. It's difficult to compare to Ember and say which I liked better. I think I preferred Sparks because the plot and dynamic was more interesting to think about. Still, they are each presenting such different concepts, that it's hard to pit one against the other. They are great stories with a lot of thoughtful concepts to ponder. It's actually quite thought provoking, especially when considering the fact that it's a children's book. Children and youth will enjoy the vivid characters and the action. Adults can still enjoy it with its fluid writing and its deeper themes. A graphic novel adaptation by comic book artist Niklas Asker was released on September 25, 2012. [2] Plot summary [ edit ] Doon serves as the reader's guide to watching two struggling groups of people dealing with hardships and sacrifices as the Emberites are taught about life in the new world and how to survive above ground. He feels the sting of hostility as the people of Sparks grow resentful of the Emberites consuming their food and other resources. That resentment grows into mistrust and eventually sparks begin to fly (pardon the pun).

About a week ago, I went on a car trip with Oot, and we listened to this book together. I see why he liked it. It's very tightly written. Good setting. Good mystery. Two POV characters, one boy and one girl. They each have their own plots, and their own character arcs. Their own problems they struggle to resolve. The boy gets angry sometimes, and his father talks to him about it, and the boy tries throughout the book to get a grip on his anger with varying success. The main new dynamic in the book acted as a commentary on the interactions between people in strained situations and the passions which lead to prejudice, anger, and eventually to war. The plot separated for a time the two main characters from Ember, Lina and Doon. DuPrau's characterization of Doon is one dimensional. His spurts of rage create the only complexity in an otherwise flat character. Lina, on the other hand, rings true as a 12-year old throughout the book, with one exception: when her grandmother dies, Lina’s grieving process is so brief it feels like the author has ignored something very important. The message was a bit heavy-handed, but I will forgive that. I think sometimes it is easy, as an adult, to say that a message is heavy-handed, but something like this can be mind-blowing to a kid who may be encountering these ideas for the first time. You can never go wrong with teaching love and acceptance and understanding and showing that there is always an opportunity to do good wherever we are.The DVD was released on January 20, 2009, in a DVD-18 format with the widescreen version of the film on one side and the full-screen version on the other. 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. 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.