The City of Ember, Pt. 2

Dave at Night has been deleted from FB's fall line-up. It's one I hadn't preread--I had read Ella Enchanted (also by Gail Carson Levine) and had read somewhere that Dave at Night was the author's favorite book she had written. The story deals with some brutality experienced by the main character while in a NYC orphanage, though, and, given the make-up of our group, with younger kids in it than originally planned and every member in it (including their fearless leader) on the sensitive side, we're going to pass on this book for now.

On to the second day we spent on The City of Ember. We began with some general questions, which you can find here (click the link and a pdf should download). The kids had a lot to say--it was an excellent discussion. After the kids had talked themselves out, we moved on to an online animated visual aid of how a hydro-powered generator works, with additional photographs of actual generators on the same page. Then we also watched the trailer for the movie and talked about how the story can often change in being translated from book to screen.

The previous week we had read aloud the part of the story when Clary sees Lina's bean plant beginning to grow on her windowsill, and this week we planted bean plants in individual plants which the kids took home.

The kids's enthusiasm for this book made it an easy one to discuss. They liked the first book they read for the group (Chasing Vermeer--look for a blog entry about this book soon), but they loved The City of Ember. Most of them are currently reading The People of Sparks, with plans to finish the series.

The City of Ember, Pt. 1

FB (Favorite Books, the book discussion group at our co-op) just finished The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau. I had no idea what good timing it would work out to be--the movie opened yesterday!

The group was set up to have activities the first week of two spent on a book, and discussion the second, but I've found that it works better to mix the two up. And since Monday is Columbus Day, the co-op isn't meeting, and I've decided that Dave at Night (by Gail Carson Levine, author of Ella Enchanted), our next book, can be squeezed into one week.

During our first week spent on Ember, we discussed where everyone was in the book (only one child, mine, hadn't yet started it), read the introduction aloud, and talked about what we knew about Ember from these few pages, and what we didn't know. Then we read aloud a bit in the first chapter where Lina (pronounced LY-na, according to the author, which the movie disregards) and Doon are given their job placements. The kids picked mock assignments from a green felt bag I whipped together Sunday night and read aloud from job description sheets I made. We talked about how it would feel to be assigned to a profession for at least three years and to have very little choice in the matter. The kids responded with ways they would get out of jobs they didn't like.

Then most of the children participated in making a book of Crawling and Flying Things, which I will color-copy and give to each child to make into a book of their own. The plan was to bring my computer the second week to input descriptions of the bugs they created (from cutting and pasting ETC clipart insects), but we didn't end up with enough time the second week to do so, so I will let each child fill in the descriptions for each bug by hand on their own.

For the remainder of the first week's time, the kids decoded a "secret message" (a la the Instructions for Egress) I created by writing a note to them, and then leaving out 1-3 letters in each word. To make it easier, I put a list of the letters the would need at the top of the page (A A A A C D D E E, etc.). This was the biggest success of the day.

When I figure out how to post my pdfs for each activity, I'll put a link here. In the meantime, here are some links I found helpful for week one:

Teachers@Random--The City of Ember
Literature to the Rescue by Lynne Farrell Stover (a pdf)
BookClubs.ca--The City of Ember

Part 2, coming soon!