Independent Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Awards: Nebraska Golden Sower Award (Nominee — 2006)
Young Hoosier Book Award (Winner — Intermediate — 2006)
Young Hoosier Book Award (Nominee — Middle Grade — 2006)
Massachusetts Children's Book Award (Nominee — 2007)
Commonwealth Club of California Book Awards (Winner — Young Adult — 2003)
Sequoyah Book Award (Nominee — Children's — 2006)
Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award (Nominee — 2006)
Triple Crown Awards (Winner — 2006)
Georgia Children's Book Award (Finalist — 2008)
Great Stone Face Book Award (Nominee — 2005)
Utah Beehive Book Award (Winner — Children's Fiction — 2005)
Kentucky Bluegrass Award (Nominee — Grades 3-5 — 2006)
Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award (Nominee — Grades 6-8 — 2005)
Sasquatch Book Award (Nominee — 2006)
Charlie May Simon Children's Book Award (Honor Book — 2006)
Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader's Choice Award (Nominee — Intermediate — 2006)
Buckeye Children's & Teen Book Award (Nominee — Grades 6-8 — 2007)
William Allen White Children's Book Award (Winner — Grades 6-8 — 2006)
William Allen White Children's Book Award (Nominee — Grades 6-8 — 2005-2006)
Nutmeg Book Award (Winner — Intermediate — 2006)
Vermont Golden Dome Book Award (Nominee)
Iowa Teen Award (Nominee — 2006)
Bluestem Award (Nominee — 2019)
Mark Twain Readers Award (Winner — 2006)
Sunshine State Young Reader's Award (Winner — 2005)
Nēnē Award (Nominee — 2008, 2009)
Judy Lopez Memorial Award for Children's Literature (Honor Book — 2004)
Nevada Young Readers' Award (Nominee — Intermediate — 2006)
Garden State Teen Book Award (Winner — Grades 6-8 — 2006)
Grand Canyon Reader Award (Nominee — Teen — 2006)
Colorado Blue Spruce Award (Nominee — 2008)
Land Of Enchantment Book Award (Winner — Young Adult — 2007)
Black-Eyed Susan Book Award (Winner — Grades 6-9 — 2006)
Flicker Tale Award (Nominee — Juvenile Books — 2006)
Colorado Children's Book Award (Nominee — 2006)
Maud Hart Lovelace Award (Nominee — 2006)
Rhode Island Teen Book Award (Nominee — 2005)
South Carolina Book Awards (Nominee — Junior Book Award — 2007)

This book is a great book for middle schoolers because it adds concepts of science and fiction to keep the readers engaged in what they are reading. This book is full of adventure and is exciting, while it also educational. It is a great book to use for a read-aloud. ( )

Sometimes you need a YA to cleanse the palate..... ( )

It's a world with no sun, lit only by electricity. But the generator is dying and the citizens of Ember don't know what to do. 12-year-old Lina discovers an ancient document that may be the secret to surviving Ember's decay, but time is running out. This book's a page turner, a mystery, and a thought-provoker. ( )

I'm tempted to attribute the dumbed down world building, logic flaws, and flat characters to the fact that this is written as children's literature, but I've read far too many excellent stories in that category to accept that children don't need or deserve better. Much of the ignorance of the people of Ember is explained at the end - that the adults who were chosen to populate that world were under strict orders to not pass on knowledge of the world before, but that just seems like a cop-out to me. Children ask questions, and their caregivers didn't have anyone preventing them from answering after they were dropped off in Ember. There was no satisfactory explanation for why the Builders demanded that their history be erased. In fact, it's nonsensical, if they expected that their descendants would need to emerge from Ember and re-integrate into the outside world some 200 years later. This is just one of the many logical flaws that kept me disengaged from the book. The characters and their relationships with one another had no depth. Lina feels very little grief for her grandmother, and forgets her death almost immediately. She seems to feel very little for her sister except concern when the child wanders off and is lost. When she refuses to leave Ember without her sister later, it seems borne of a sense of responsibility rather than any actual connection. She might as well have been refusing to leave without her only pair of shoes. I finished the story mostly because it was on audio and kept me company while doing some chores around the house, but if I had been actually reading the book, I probably would have put it down halfway through and not picked it up again. ( )