Book Box Favorites
By Hollie Parry

In the book Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke, the main character Meggie has a special love of books.  She considers her favorite books as old friends and places them lovingly in a box built for her by her father.  Whenever Meggie moves to a new location or is scared, she finds solace and familiarity in the books she knows so well. (I really loved this book and recommend it strongly for the fantasy lover.)

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After reading Inkheart, I fell in love with the idea of a book box, and started one of my own. It contains not only the books that I have treasured for a long time, but some new titles as well.  My book box stands besides my bed, ready and waiting with tales of far away places and characters whose lives seems different from my own, but whose problems I can relate to.  I can grab them at a moment’s notice when I can’t sleep, when I need to unwind, or when I just want to escape into the beautiful world of books.

Although not everyone may have a book box, everyone certainly has books that they love to read and re-read.  For the next few months I will be reviewing books that readers recommend; both new titles and old favorites.  If you have a book box favorite to recommend, I would love to hear from you and will try to feature it over time in this column.  Please write me as a letter to the editor or directly at hsparry@hotmail.com. 

To start with, Melanie from Idaho recommends The City of Ember and The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau.

In The City of Ember the two main characters, Lina and Doon, live in a city where all of the light is generated by electricity.  The people of Ember’s lives are dictated by the times when the lights of the city are turned on and off.  They have never known the sun, the wind, or the elements and have lived a continuous existence for many generations in their city and know nothing different.  Lately, the city has been experiencing frequent blackouts, which have everyone including Lina and Doon concerned. 

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Lina and Doon are in their last year of school and are awaiting their job assignment.  Lina hopes that she will be a messenger and have the chance to run through the streets of Ember delivering exciting news to the people of the town.  Doon wants an assignment to work underground on the generator, so that he can discover a way to remedy the blackout situation and save the city.  Lina and Doon begin their jobs and discover that the situation with the city is much worse than anyone has imagined.  They find some instructions that were written by the builders of their city and after deciphering the message, realize that it may be up to them to bravely journey into the unknown and try to save the city. 

 

 

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This book reminds me of The Giver by Lois Lowry in many ways and like The Giver caused me to consider what life would be like if we weren’t given the gift of Agency in our lives.  The City of Ember was the reason I found Meridian Magazine and I highly recommend it for all readers.

 

 

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The People of Sparksis a sequel to The City of Ember.  In this book, Lina and Doon meet the people of Sparks.  The people of Sparks are much like the people of Ember in that they live an existence that is almost completely independent of outside influences.  While Lina and Doon are in Sparks they experience prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination because they are the outsiders. They must learn to do things they have not done before and interact with people whose daily life is much different than life in Ember. 

Throughout the book, the author does a great job of showing readers how strong emotions can lead peaceable people to war because of different backgrounds, different religions, or different ideas about how things should be. The People of Sparks was a book that I read quickly and that kept my interest.  Because it was a sequel, I was excited to find out what the rest of the story was in Lina and Doon’s lives and think that you will also enjoy these two books.

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While I was revisiting these two books for this column, I also picked up a third book written by Jeanne DuPrau called The Prophet of Yonwood.  Although this book is a prequel to The City of Ember, it should be read after the previous books.  In this book the main character, Nickie, travels with her aunt to the small town of Yonwood. Their purpose in Yonwood is to prepare Nickie’s great-grandparents’ house for sale.  Nickie wishes that her family would move into the old house instead of selling it.  She believes that in Yonwood they can find a simpler, happy life and escape the turmoil and political problems that the country is facing.

Meanwhile, in Yonwood, an old woman speaks in a strange prophetic-like jumble and the people of the town decide that she is a prophetess, chosen to save the town from impending destruction of the world. Led by Mrs. Beeson, the town starts to make rash decisions and judgments based on the words of the prophetess that force the people into complying with outrageous and ridiculous laws. Nickie tries to decide what she believes and how her young life will be affected by the ideas of Yonwood and of the world.

Although I did not like this book as well as the first two, there are some great messages that apply to what we are facing in our world today.  DuPrau weaves her own political views into the plot of this story, which caused me to stop and think.  This is a good read that is slow to start but ends well.