The City of Ember · Garden Heights

Part 1

for The City of Ember · Part 1 · The Instructions & Chapters 1–2

8 Parts40 min

What Happens in Part 1

Before the story begins, the Builders of Ember write out directions their city will one day need, seal them inside a box fitted with a lock timed to release itself at an appointed hour, and entrust it to the first mayor to hand along. Mayor follows mayor; the box keeps traveling, and the reason for it fades out of living memory. Then the novel proper opens on Assignment Day. Ember is a city with rock instead of sky, lit only by floodlights, and school ends at twelve, when each student reaches into a bag for a job slip. Lina Mayfleet draws Pipeworks Laborer and dreads the thought of years underground; Doon Harrow draws Messenger and wants nothing to do with running errands — he means to get down to the generator and repair it. The two trade slips, and the trade stands. Around them the warning signs stack up: blackouts that stretch a little longer each time, storerooms that cannot restock bulbs or paper, a city quietly wearing out. Lina goes home to her grandmother and her baby sister Poppy, carrying a job she wanted — in a city that is running out of light.

What We Will Learn

Section	What you will practice
Vocabulary	Power and scarcity words: generator, blackout, dwindle, provisions, subterranean…
Literary Elements	A prologue that hands the reader a secret, and two students who trade futures
Cross-Curricular	How electricity reaches a city — and what one worn machine can cost

Chapter Summary

Ch.	What happens
The Instructions	A Box with a Clock Inside — the Builders write down what the people of Ember will one day need to know, lock the pages inside a container timed to release itself at an appointed hour, and hand it to the first mayor to pass along; generation after generation, the box travels onward while the reason for it quietly fades from memory.
1	Assignment Day — school ends at twelve in Ember, and the mayor arrives with a cloth bag of job slips; Lina Mayfleet draws Pipeworks Laborer and dreads it, Doon Harrow draws Messenger and wants no part of it, and the two classmates trade slips on the spot.
2	A City of Fading Light — Ember is roofed by rock and lit only by floodlights, the blackouts are stretching longer, the storerooms keep running short; Lina goes home to her grandmother and baby sister Poppy, while Doon aims himself at the failing generator.

Part 1

Vocabulary

Study 10 key words from The Instructions & Chapters 1–2, then answer each question.

📚Knowledge Bank · The Vocabulary of Electric Power

Electrical Engineering · Generators, Grids, and LoadsElectricity is not kept in a warehouse under a city; it is manufactured at the instant somebody switches on a lamp. Inside a power station, a moving force — falling water, hot steam, or wind — spins a wheel of curved blades called a turbine, and that wheel turns the shaft of a generator, where a coil of wire rotating inside a magnetic field pushes electrons out along heavy cables. The network of cables, transformers, and switches that carries the current outward is a grid. Everything drawing power at one moment — every lamp, pump, and motor together — adds up to the system’s load. When the load climbs above what the machines can supply, voltage sags and lights dim; when supply stops altogether, the network goes dark. The people of Ember never use this technical vocabulary, yet each word names a real part of the machinery their lives rest on, including the lengthening darkness they call a blackout.

subterraneanadj.Ch.1–2

Located beneath the surface of the earth

“Ember is a subterranean city with rock where a sky should be.”

generatorn.Ch.2

A machine that turns motion into electric current

“One aging generator supplies every lamp in the city.”

blackoutn.Ch.1–2

A period when electric power fails completely

“Each blackout lasts a little longer than the one before.”

dwindlev.Ch.2

To grow steadily smaller or fewer

“The stock of light bulbs continues to dwindle.”

provisionsn.Ch.2

Stored supplies of food and necessary goods

“Clerks count the provisions left on the storeroom shelves.”

laborern.Ch.1

A worker whose job is hard physical work

“A Pipeworks laborer spends the day underground and wet.”

messengern.Ch.1

Someone who carries words from person to person

“A messenger runs the streets all day for a few coins.”

flickerv.Ch.2

To shine unsteadily, wavering on and off

“The floodlights flicker before a blackout begins.”

dreadv.Ch.1

To fear something that lies ahead

“Lina came to dread the years of pipe work waiting for her.”

appointedadj.The Instructions

Fixed or decided in advance

“The lock was built to release itself at the appointed hour.”

ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.

1Located beneath the surface of the earth is ___.Ch.1–2

2A machine that turns motion into electric current is a ___.Ch.2

3To ‘dwindle’ means to grow steadily smaller or fewer.Ch.2

4Stored supplies of food and necessary goods are ___.Ch.2

5Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.1–2

Word choices:blackoutflickerlaborerappointed- some words will not be used

The floodlights before a blackout begins.

Each lasts a little longer than the one before.

6A worker whose job is hard physical work is a ___.Ch.1

7A ‘messenger’ in Ember repairs the city’s broken machines.Ch.1–2

8To fear something that lies ahead is to ___.Ch.1

9Fill in the blanks with the correct words.The Instructions

Word choices:appointedprovisionsgeneratordwindle- some words will not be used

The lock was built to release itself at the hour.

One aging supplies every lamp in the city.

10To shine unsteadily, wavering on and off, is to ___.Ch.2

Part 2

Comprehension

Show you understood what happens in The Instructions & Chapters 1–2.

📋Knowledge Bank · One Generator, One Whole City

Civil Engineering · How a City Gets Its PowerPower reaches a street lamp through a chain, and every link in it matters. Moving water or steam drives a turbine; the turbine spins a generator; step-up transformers lift the voltage so current can travel far without bleeding away as heat; substations lower it again for houses and workshops. A large modern city is fed by several stations wired together, so when one shuts down the others absorb its share of the demand. An isolated settlement has no such neighbor. Remote mining camps and small islands often run what engineers call a microgrid: one plant, one set of lines, one stock of spare parts. For such a system, maintenance decides everything, because bearings wear, insulation cracks, and replacement parts have to be manufactured somewhere by someone who still knows how. Ember is that case carried to an extreme — a windowless city whose floodlights, pumps, and shops all trace back to one aging machine. When an entire system hangs on a single component, engineers call that component a single point of failure.

1What do the Builders do in ‘The Instructions’?The Instructions

2Who is supposed to keep the Builders’ box?The Instructions

3How are jobs handed out on Assignment Day?Ch.1

4Lina is delighted when she reads the job she has drawn.Ch.1

5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events in ‘The Instructions’ and Chapters 1–2. Number 1 = what happens first.Ch.1–2

The two classmates trade slips and the swap is allowed to stand.
The Builders lock their written directions inside a timed box.
Both Lina and Doon end up holding jobs neither of them wants.
Mayor after mayor inherits the box until its purpose is forgotten.
Lina’s class gathers as the mayor arrives with the job slips.

6Doon is eager to spend his working life as a messenger.Ch.1

7Why does Doon want a job in the Pipeworks?Ch.1

8What is Ember’s only source of light?Ch.1–2

9Ember’s blackouts have been getting longer.Ch.1–2

10Who lives with Lina at home?Ch.2

Part 3

Literary Elements

Understanding HOW and WHY Jeanne DuPrau tells the story across The Instructions & Chapters 1–2.

🧠Knowledge Bank · What the Reader Knows First

Literary Craft · Prologue and Dramatic IronyA prologue is a scene set outside the main story’s time, and DuPrau uses hers to hand the reader a secret before the novel properly begins. We watch the Builders lock written directions inside a container and arrange for it to travel from one mayor to the next. Lina and Doon are never given that scene; only we are. The distance between what an audience knows and what a character knows is called dramatic irony, and it quietly reassigns the weight of ordinary details: a stuttering floodlight is an inconvenience to a citizen of Ember, while to the reader it reads as a countdown. DuPrau then splits her attention between a runner who wants to see the city and a thinker who wants to fix it, a structure called dual viewpoint, so one crisis gets examined from two angles. Notice how little the opening explains outright. Information withheld and released on the author’s schedule is the engine of suspense.

Prologue

The Builders’ scene comes before the story proper — and only the reader is invited to it.

Dramatic irony

We know a locked box is counting down; nobody in Ember does. Every flicker means more to us.

Setting as pressure

The failing city is not a backdrop — it squeezes both children into the choices they make.

1The scene with the Builders is best described as a ___.The Instructions

2Fill in the blank with the correct literary term.The Instructions

Word choices:prologueironyrhymesequel- some words will not be used

The Builders’ scene works as a .

Knowing about the box creates dramatic .

3The characters in Ember know about the Builders’ locked box.Ch.1–2

4Because of the prologue, a flickering light means more to the reader than to a citizen because ___.Ch.1–2

5DuPrau follows two students rather than one in order to ___.Ch.1–2

6Ember’s decaying city works as a force that pressures the characters.Ch.1–2

7The job slips drawn from a bag mostly serve to show that in Ember ___.Ch.1

8Fill in the blank with the correct literary term.Ch.1–2

Word choices:settingweatherrhythmpreface- some words will not be used

The dying city works as pressuring .

9The trade of assignment slips reveals what each student values.Ch.1

10The opening chapters mainly work to ___.Ch.1–2

Part 4

Think Deeper

Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.

💡Knowledge Bank · Designing for the Day It Breaks

Engineering Ethics · Redundancy and RiskWorking engineers rarely ask whether a machine will fail; they ask what happens when it does. The professional answer is redundancy — a second pump, a spare transformer, a backup engine wired to start within seconds of a fault. Hospitals in most countries are legally required to keep standby power for operating rooms, because the cost of a dark surgical suite is counted in lives rather than money. Spare capacity is expensive, so somebody has to decide how much risk a community will carry, and that decision is ethical as much as technical. Two questions follow. Who is entitled to know the true condition of a system everyone depends on? And is postponing repairs to save resources now a fair trade, or a debt handed quietly to the next generation? Ember’s leaders answer both by saying almost nothing, which readers can weigh against the standard engineers accept: a system that matters must never depend on a machine with no backup.

Think back over this opening. Somewhere before anyone in this story was born, careful adults write down what a future city will need to know, lock the pages away, and set a clock ticking inside the lid. Generations later, a classroom of twelve-year-olds lines up to reach into a cloth bag and pull out the rest of their lives. Overhead, floodlights buzz where a sky should be; the storerooms keep coming up short, and the darkness lasts longer every time it falls. Two students walk out of that room having swapped futures — one running toward the streets she loves, the other climbing down toward the machine she is convinced is dying.

Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.

1Claim: “Ember’s trouble is a systems problem, not a people problem.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence

2What the Builders planned for, or What Ember has actually become? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two

◄ What the Builders planned forWhat Ember has actually become ►

3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect

The Builders lock the directions and set a date→

One aging generator supplies the entire city→

Doon believes the generator can still be repaired→

Lina cannot face years of work in the Pipeworks→

4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument

DuPrau gives Ember ONE generator — not a dozen small ones — because , which shows that .

Part 5

Standardized Test

Reading passage · How Electricity Reaches a City · Words in Context & Central Ideas · SAT & TOEFL-style practice

🎯 You already have the skills from the sections above — this is just a fun way to meet real SAT & TOEFL-style questions. Read the passage (the highlighted words are tested below), then answer the questions below. Tap an answer to select it, then tap it again to confirm — you can change your choice until you confirm.

Every city runs on a chain of machines that most residents never see. At a power station, some moving force — falling water, hot steam, or wind — spins a turbine, a wheel of curved blades mounted on a shaft. That shaft turns a generator, where a coil of wire rotating inside a magnetic field pushes an electric current out along heavy cables. Electricity is made at the instant it is used, which is why a station must match a city’s changing demand minute by minute.

Getting the current to a street lamp is a second problem. Energy leaks away as heat over long distances, so transformers raise the voltage sharply for the journey and drop it again near its destination; engineers call this stage transmission. Substations then divide the flow into neighborhood circuits. One loose connection or cracked insulator can interrupt the whole chain, so operators watch their instruments for the earliest hint of trouble. Lamps that dim and brighten are often the first sign that supply and demand have slipped out of balance.

Large cities protect themselves by refusing to depend on one of anything. Several stations feed the same network, and when one shuts down the others take up its share — a design principle called redundancy. Isolated communities cannot always afford it. A remote island or mining camp may own a single plant, a single set of lines, and a single stock of spare parts, which turns every component into a single point of failure. In such a place the unglamorous work of maintenance is the only thing standing between the town and total darkness.

Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.

1What is the main idea of the passage?SAT · Central Ideas

2According to the passage, why must a station match demand minute by minute?TOEFL · Factual Information

3Why is voltage raised for a long journey?TOEFL · Factual Information

4In the passage, a turbine is ___.SAT · Words in Context

5What do substations do, according to the passage?TOEFL · Factual Information

6In the passage, transmission refers to ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary

7What can be inferred from lamps that dim and brighten?SAT · Inference

8In the passage, redundancy means ___.SAT · Words in Context

9Why does maintenance matter more in an isolated community?SAT · Inference

10Which Part 1 situation does this passage BEST explain?SAT · Central Ideas

Part 6 · Optional

Creative Writing

A bonus challenge to practice your English. Take your time and have fun with it.

About This Section

This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!

Writing Task — Part 1 “One Thing Everything Depends On”

Ember runs on a single machine, so one breakdown threatens the whole city. Write about something in your own life that everything else depends on — a bus, a phone, one person, one habit. What happens on the day it fails, and what would a backup look like? 6–10 sentences. End with the backup you would build first.

You can start with: “There is one thing I count on without ever thinking about it...”

0 / 40 words minimum

🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)

No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.

Part 1 Complete!

You finished The Instructions & Chapters 1–2 of The City of Ember.

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Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Jeanne DuPrau. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Jeanne DuPrau’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.