City of Ember - Jeanne DuPrau

I read this book a long, long time ago - when it first came out even, if you can believe that. And my husband actually went on to read the whole rest of the series! I really liked the premise of this book, so I was pleased that our mother-daughter book club took this on as our choice for April. We've done such a wide variety of genres in our book club. It's been really great. And this book provided a lot of really great discussion material which was awesome.

We talked about things like how the earth today has many environmental and social issues and what sort of problems could have led to the building of the City of Ember. We talked about who might have built Ember and when does the story happens. Clearly, the city of Ember was built when people were worried that the human race might not survive. We wondered if this was a good plan and what about it was good/not so good. What job would we have been wanted to be assigned? Did Lina and Doon get the right things assigned to them? How did everyone there get along so well we wondered? And that mayor! The mayor is the most corrupt character in the novel. He squelches the thirst for knowledge and limits freedom, yet the majority of the townspeople just accept his behavior. Why did they act this way? How could they? How could Lina take Poppy and put her in such danger? Would we have done the same thing if she were our sister? What if she were your daughter, I asked the moms. They'd ALL have taken her.

This is a very interesting furturistic sci-fi book - although now that I say that, they're totally lacking on the science, which is kind of where their problem stems from...so I wonder what genrre this is classified in. I'll have to look this up. Anyway, whatever genre it is, I really liked it and thought it was great for discussion. I'm eager to see the movie now!