The City of Ember

by Jeanne DuPrau
Scott County Library audiobook 6 CDs
read by Wendy Dillon
genre: YA dystopian

I looked for my "previous" entry on this book (knowing that I had read it before) and only found book four in this series that I blogged about in 2009! So clearly, I read this book a long, long time ago. The "re-read" was interesting. There were details I had not noticed or remembered. Having seen the movie sometime within the last few years, I knew that it was extremely different than the book.

Here are some of my car notes:

• This takes place in the year "241" . . . and the builders / planners made the instructions to be accessible in 200-220 years. Uh-oh!
• A class of 24 twelve year-olds . . . would estimate an overall population of ??? Just curious. And at the end of the book, we learn that 100 elderly men and women went into Ember with 100 babies. 
• two years earlier, Lina's dad died from coughing sickness and "a few months later," her mother died in childbirth. Poppy is 1 1/2 years old and is referred to as a "baby," but nothing about diapers . . . 
• Doon - super serious, with anger issues / Lina - light hearted, but responsible (for toddler sister and aging grandma with memory issues)
• Doon's dad is wise about anger and its mastery of you bringing unintended consequences. (Like later, when Doon accidentally crushed the snail.)

I enjoyed this book and almost wish I'd saved it for when we were driving up north!

The narrator did a fine job, though the wheezing sound effects for the mayor and some of the other vocal characterizations got a bit irritating. I didn't realize the author's name was pronounced "Dee-Pro" and not "Dee-Prow" . . . I've always said it with the "ow" as in "owie" sound.