The City of Ember

1. The City of Ember Written by Jeanne DuPrau Series Project PowerPoint by: Stacey Ziginow LIS 6520 Fall 2010

2. Jeanne DuPrau • Jeanne has always enjoyed reading and writing since she was a child. • She has been a teacher, an editor, and a technical writer. • She had never written a novel before she wrote City of Ember. • She writes at her desk everyday, but never for more than a couple hours at a time. • The first version for City of Ember was written years ago, and it took her approximately two years to actually complete writing it.

3. Background on the City of Ember Series • Jeanne is not sure where she got the idea for the story The City of Ember from. • One possibility she said was from growing up in the 1950s and having bomb drills in school and knowing that people were building bomb shelters in their backyards. • She stated in an interview, “But I did not consciously sit down to write a story with this in mind. It was more as if the city of Ember simply appeared in my imagination.” • The hardest part of writing the story was the plot and deciding what would happen next, and how everything was tied together. • The characters and setting were easy to create in her mind.

4. The City of Ember For over two hundred years, the people of Ember have lived in darkness and light. Yet, the light only comes from the floodlights and lamps of the citizens of Ember homes. Lately though the lights have been flickering and at times going out for short periods of time. There must be something that can be done to make things better. On Assignment Day, the 12 year-olds leave school and begin working in the City of Ember. Lina Mayfleet begins her job as Messenger, while her classmate Doon Harrow begins his job as a Pipeworks Laborer. Doon knows that something is not right within Ember and wants to do anything he can to make things better. So when Lina discovers fragments of paper that appears to have instructions on them, her and Doon set off on a journey to discover the truth behind the words. Lina and Doon soon discover the message behind the words. In the Pipeworks building there are boats, with oars, matches, and candles to help them leave Ember behind and travel to a new place. When Lina and Doon attempt to tell the citizens of Ember, the mayor does what he can to stop them. Will Lina and Doon make it to this new place, and will they be alone, or will the others follow?

5. The People of Sparks Sequel to The City of Ember Lina and Doon have made it safely out of Ember. They have gotten a message to those still in Ember about how to leave Ember behind using the boats. Once the citizens of Ember have emerged from the cave, they begin to walk and look for a place to live. Eventually they stumble upon Sparks, a fairly new city still trying to rebuild after the devastation. While Sparks seems like a wonderful place to be, and as the people of Ember, or Emberites as they are now referred to, try to adapt to a world they have never experienced before, things get difficult. The people of Sparks fear they will not have enough food to support 400 more people during the upcoming winter. Therefore, they decide to let the Emberites stay, but only for six months. During that time the people of Sparks will teach the Emberites what they know and then the people of Ember will have to leave and try to build their own place to live. Once again Lina and Doon feel it is their responsibility to help the people of Ember and now the people of Sparks to get along with one another. When Lina sets out on a trip to the ancient city to determine whether the people of Ember should move there, things begin to get worse in Sparks. Accusations between the two groups begin and a small conflict arises after the Emberites are told they will have to leave. After Lina’s selflessness of helping to save the city of Sparks and Doon’s harrowing rescue of a citizen of Sparks, things begin to turn around.

6. The Prophet of YonwoodPrequel to the City of Ember Nickie’s family has just inherited a mansion from her great-grandfather who lived in Yonwood, North Carolina. While her mother can’t take off work to go and prepare the mansion to be sold, Nickie tags along with her aunt Crystal in hopes that she can convince Crystal and her mother not to sell the mansion. While there, Nickie sets three goals for herself, 1) keep the mansion from being sold; 2) to fall in love; and 3) to do something useful for the world. The last goal is the one that almost gets Nickie in trouble. Mrs. Althea Tower, now the town prophet, had a vision that has left her in bed, mumbling incoherently. At times she calls out something that Mrs. Brenda Beeson believes to be things the people of Yonwood should do in order to stay safe while the world possibly goes to war with the Phalanx Nations. Nickie begins to scout out people who are not being good and tells Mrs. Beeson. Mrs. Beeson takes it upon herself to inform these people that they will receive a buzzing bracelet on their wrist if they do not do away with the bad thing they are doing. During all of this, Nickie and her mother, who is still in the city, receives postcards from her father. Her father has been working on a secret job assignment and keeps sending postcards with encrypted messages, on his location. At the same time, Mr. Hoyt McCoy is working on his own secret project, that he feels will save the Earth from ruin.

7. The Diamond of Darkhold In the final book, the people of Sparks, which now includes the people of Ember, are dealing with the harsh winter and the depletion of supplies. While a roamer is visiting, Doon notices a book she has and Lina trades one match for it. After close examination Doon believes it is another book that will help the people of Sparks. He decides that he and Lina should go back to Ember and see if they can find anything that will help the people of Sparks. Lina and Doon set out for Ember and once there discover that there is a ledge that leads all the way down into the Unknown Regions of Ember. However, now with the candles and Doon’s generated that can power a light bulb, they can make their way from the Unknown Regions into the city of Ember. On their way down though, they discover a light coming from the center of Ember. A family of roamers have made their way down to the city of Ember and are living there. The father and son capture Doon and chain him up to make him stay so that he doesn’t go tell others about the underground city. Doon discovers what the book was talking about when the father shows him the diamond. However, Doon doesn’t know how it can help the people of Sparks. At night while the family is sleeping, he escapes from their hold and he ends up with the diamond. He makes his way back up to the ground level where he and Lina head back to Sparks. While in Sparks Lina and Doon discover that the diamond can capture the sun’s ray and turn that into power to light a light bulb. With this new discovery, the people of Sparks go back to Ember and collect any and all things they might be able to use to sustain life.

8. Characters Doon - Doon is one of the main characters. He is always trying to do what is best for the people of Ember. He is extremely smart, which is displayed in his ability to build a generator of his own. He is somewhat of a risk-taker, but it is always for the good of his family and people of Ember. Lina – Lina is also a main character. She too wants to do what she can for the people of Ember. She is very independent and also a risk-taker, which is evident when she journeys to the ancient city. She is willing to do what it takes for her city. Mrs. Murdo– Mrs. Murdo is a minor character, but is relevant because she went from being a next-door neighbor to Lina and Poppy to a mother-figure for the girls. She is someone Lina can depend on. Torren – Torren is a minor character who is first introduced in The People of Sparks. Torren at first is a bratty kid who does not want to share his room with anyone, least of all the cave people. By the end of the last book, he has become someone Lina and Doon enjoy spending time with. Torren also showed that he could do something that was not selfish. Lizzie – Lizzie is a minor character that can be found in three of the books. For the most part Lizzie wants to be associated with anyone that can be considered famous, or do something that will benefit her. In the first book, she spent time with Looper, who was stealing things from the storeroom. In the second book, she was always at Tick’s side agreeing with whatever he said about fighting against the people of Sparks. In the fourth book, she wants to be the one that Doon thanks for helping him. However, after Lina and Doon return home she finally realizes that they are both her friends and she is just happy to have friends. Kenny – Kenny is in two of the books. He is first introduced in The People of Sparks where he is a shy boy who doesn’t say a lot. In the fourth book, he is now willing to help find Lina and Doon no matter where it takes him. He shows a lot of bravery which was not evident in the other book. The third book had characters that were completely new. The only character that we later are introduced to is Mr. Hoyt McCoy, and he is mentioned briefly in the fourth and final book. In the last book, Mr. McCoy was in the star, or at least what the people of Sparks thought was a star, they saw in the sky. In fact, Mr. McCoy was in a spaceship that had left shortly before the devastation had occurred and was living a life in a spaceship where he was making contact with another life form.

9. Planned Series? • Jeanne explained in an interview that she had never intended on writing a sequel to TheCity of Ember. In fact, she was not sure that The City of Ember would even be published. • In addition, she never even considered writing a prequel to the series. So when the idea of explaining where The City of Ember came from it was some time after she had written the first book. • There really was no planning of the story as she wrote. She simply wrote what came to her as she was writing and figured she could go back and revise the story later. She did this with all four books.

10. Bibliography DuPrau, J. (n.d.). Jeanne DuPrau: author of the books of ember. www.jeanneduprau.com DuPrau, J. (n.d.). Author spotlight on Jeanne DuPrau. http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=7639&view=full_sptlght DuPrau, J. (2003). The city of ember. New York: Random House. DuPrau, J. (2008). The diamond of darkhold. New York: Yearling. DuPrau, J. (2004). The people of sparks. New York: Random House. DuPrau, J. (2006). The prophet of yonwood.New York: Random House. Wake County Public Libraries. (2003). Interview with Jeanne DuPrau. http://www.wakegov.com/NR/rdonlyres/3C94DA81-F2A5-4060-80C9-EF6DD6897120/0/CityofEmber.pdf I leave you with a quote from Jeanne DuPrau: “What could be more interesting than thinking of mysterious happenings, finding the answers to intriguing questions, and making up new worlds?”