Logan Hodges

Professor Blanford
UWRT 1101
17 September 2015
The Library
Come on Logan, lets go! my dad would say to me as he was walking out the
door. It was always a family tradition that on Wednesdays we would go to the community
library before heading to church. I was in the 1st grade the first time we went. My father
told my brother and I how fun the library was and if we were good, we would get to play
on the computers there. I cannot remember any of the books I read from there, except
The City of Ember. I read the whole series and I have never found a book that I
enjoyed more.
Before reading The City of Ember, I remember reading books from my
elementary schools library. For example, I read the Junie B. Jones book series and The
Magic School Bus book series. I was very entertained by them, but they were very
school-like and didnt have a good story line. I was more interested in Fiction books,
books that made me think out of the box. Fiction books that dealt with kids my age, and
was experiencing the same things I was, while going through something that I couldnt
imagine, was fascinating.
I found The City of Ember so intriguing because it was about these younger
kids, Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, who lived in this underground world that had no
sun, no moon, and no lights at all except when the electricity was on. All the electricity
was ran off of this generator that was suppose to last 200 years. The lights started

flickering so the Mayor made it to where they would have an earlier lights out time to
try and save as much electricity as possible. In the book, the children graduated school
and began their job that was assigned by the government. Doon was assigned to work on
the pipes and Lina was a messenger. Throughout the book, Lina discovers a piece of
paper that said that the reason they came up with this city was to save 100 adults and 100
children so that they can repopulate the earth. Also, they end up finding a piece of paper
that showed them the way out of Ember. They follow the instructions and it leads them to
a boat thats in the underground river. The river lead them to the real world and once they
figured out that they could save everyone back in Ember, they rolled the note up and but
it in a bottle and sent it back down the river.
I found this book very interesting and such a compelling read because these kids
were just like me, with parents who had normal jobs just like mine, and they ended up
saving a whole town. My dad was very pleased when he would walk into my bedroom
and I would be sitting at my desk, reading these books. I believe that having my father
push me to go to the library and finding books that I liked helped me find this
extraordinary book. But, because I thought this book was so great, I wanted all other
books I read to be that good. The books I read after that series never stood up to The
City of Ember standard.
With that being said, today I dont read as many books as I did back then. Finding
a book that keeps my interest is rare because I dont find reading as appealing anymore. I
am not opposed to sitting down and reading a good compelling book if I found one that
would interest me as much as The City of Ember did. In todays time, I would rather go
and watch the movie connected to a book, rather than reading the actual book because

viewing the storyline played out rather than trying to comprehend what is happening, is a
more affective way to get the point across.