Blog #1 The People Of Sparks

The name of my book that I read over the summer is called The People of Sparks. The book takes place a very long time into the future but it is not futuristic because there was a war and three types of illnesses that swept away most of the world. The rest of the people who survived (Who were extremely lucky) had to start a new world. A young female author named Jeanne Duprau wrote this fantastic novel about a city of people that lived in an underground city that had been spared from the illnesses and war being underground found a way out of their almost dead city and into the real world. Mrs. Duprau has written a trilogy of novels the People of Sparks being the second. I really enjoyed this novel because I liked to see how the cave people cooperated with another city that they met up with and how the city people tried to put up with them.

The book starts off with the whole city trudging out of the cave and into a valley with the main characters Doon and Lina leading the way. I remember some of the quotes were, “Hey look light comes from up there!” “Look, it’s a ball of light!” “It’s a fur ball that moves! Ow! It bit me!” Now, you might think that these people are pretty stupid but if you had lived underground your whole life then you would understand. These people were called the People of Ember, named after their city. Doon and Lina being the pair that discovered the way out of their dying city decided it was best to find someone that could help. (If there was anyone). Soon they meet up with a small village called Sparks that is a little overwhelmed with how many refugees are storming into their village. Although they are overwhelmed they handle it very well and give the people of Ember a place to stay. The People of Sparks say that they will give them six months to learn all the skills necessary to live on their own in the wilderness. The Sparks people are very good after a few months and they provide what they can spare from their crop but after a while the People of Sparks get a little tired of these cavemen and ask them to leave before the six months is up or face the weapon.

The People of Ember are also not very happy with the Sparks people. They complain that they are not fed enough and are also very upset when they find leaves on the front step of their little house and when they cleaned it up it made them scratch all over causing the itchiness to spread. Also there was a note for them on the wall of the Town Hall that read, “Go crawl back into your hole!” It also said some more inappropriate things that hurt the Ember people. It made them especially angry when they were ordered to leave because what would they do? And how would they get through the winter with enough food? All of this infuriated them and it seemed inevitable that there was going to be a war. On the day that they were ordered to leave some of the people of Ember formed a rebellion and stood in front of the town hall making there demands. They demanded that they be treated equally with the Sparks people and that they be allowed to stay. The Sparks people then brung out the weapon that turned out to be a cannon. The Sparks people set off the cannon but it backfired and started a fire in a tree next to the town hall. Soon the town hall was on fire and the people of Sparks started a “Fire line,” where the first few people had buckets full of water and they dumped it onto the fire then filled their bucket and gave it to the next person in line. However the fire was too big and the Sparks people were losing so Lina and Doon led the way and joined the Sparks people in the Fire line. Many Ember people called them traitors for doing this but soon after more Ember people joined the line. The fire started to die down and everyone congratulated themselves and it was agreed that the People of Ember would be allowed to stay as a united city.

The book was written in third person and is told from either Lina’s or Doon’s point of view. It wasn’t extremely descriptive but sometimes I like books like that because I can paint my own view of the setting rather than the author doing it for me. It was a very quick 350 pages and I would recommend it to all readers. It doesn’t really relate to anything that we are covering in class but it could relate to how England and France are having lots of disputes in our Human Heritage textbook and how the Ember and Sparks people have their little disputes.

If you like a very descriptive book than Jeanne Duprau could’ve done a lot more for you but if your like me and get kind of bored with the long descriptions and like to paint your own image of the story then this is a perfect novel for you. Other than that I think. Jeanne Duprau did a fantastic job on this novel. Can’t wait for the third Mrs. Duprau!!!!