Part 1
On Assignment Day, Lina and Doon trade job slips in an underground city whose lights are failing.
The Builders' boxBefore the story begins, the Builders of Ember write 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.
Assignment Day tradeThe story opens on Assignment Day in Ember, a city with rock instead of sky, lit only by floodlights, where school ends at twelve and each student draws a job slip. Lina Mayfleet draws Pipeworks Laborer and dreads years underground; Doon Harrow draws Messenger, wanting instead to get down to the generator and repair it. The two trade slips, and the trade stands.
A city wearing outAround 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.
| 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 |
| 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. |
ⓘ 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.
- 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.
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.
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 and plunge a district into a blackout, 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 stock of spare parts that can only dwindle as repairs use them up, 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.
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.
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.
Here are your auto-graded results:
The best last step is to teach it. In your own words, explain what happened — retell a favorite scene, teach a character’s big choice, or sum up the main idea for a parent, friend, or classmate. When you can teach it clearly, you truly own it.
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.