The City of Ember
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50 free The City of Ember trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The City of Ember drops readers into a city where the sky is always black and the lamps are starting to fail. Two twelve-year-olds, Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, are the only ones willing to ask what happens when the lights go out for good, and their search for an answer has kept the novel on reading lists since 2003. These questions cover the whole story: Assignment Day and the trade of jobs, the torn document left by the Builders, the secrets hidden in the Pipeworks, and the journey down the river. A handful look beyond the plot to the other Books of Ember and the 2008 film. Use them as a reading check after finishing the book, as discussion starters for a class or book club, or just to see how much you remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the quiz doubles as a quick review of the plot.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The City of Ember, for about how long did the Builders intend people to stay in the city?
200 years
200 years was the plan, but the instructions for leaving went astray. By the time Lina and Doon find them, Ember has run decades past its limit and is falling apart.
Q 02In The City of Ember, who chews up the Builders' instructions before anyone can read them?
Poppy
Poppy, Lina's toddler sister, gets at the open box while Granny empties a closet and treats the paper as a snack. Lina has to rebuild the document from torn, half-eaten scraps.
Q 03Which job does Lina Mayfleet gladly take after swapping Assignment Day jobs with Doon Harrow?
Messenger
Messenger was the job Doon had been given and hated. He takes Lina's Pipeworks post instead, hoping to study the failing generator up close.
Q 04Which two unfamiliar items do Lina and Doon find in boxes in the hidden room beside Ember's river?
Candles and matches
Candles and matches mean nothing to them at first, because Ember has never had a light that can be carried. Once lit, they show the pair a boat and its paddles.
Q 05What is Mayor Cole secretly doing in the Pipeworks room that Doon Harrow stumbles upon?
Hoarding stolen supplies
Hoarding stolen supplies is the mayor's private answer to Ember's shortages. Doon finds him dozing in a chair, surrounded by food and clothes, while the city goes without.
Q 06Which American author wrote The City of Ember, the first of four novels about the buried city?
Jeanne DuPrau
Jeanne DuPrau had been a teacher, an editor and a technical writer before the novel came out in 2003. Three more Books of Ember followed it.
Q 07Which actor plays Mayor Cole in the 2008 film adaptation City of Ember?
Bill Murray
Bill Murray took the role of Ember's mayor in a cast that also included Tim Robbins and Martin Landau. At the premiere he said the story spoke to anyone feeling a little lost.
Q 08In The City of Ember, which two groups did the Builders choose as the city's first residents?
Older adults and babies
Older adults and babies went down together, each elderly couple raising two infants. The children were never to be told about the world their guardians had left behind.
Q 09What is the first natural light Lina and Doon see when they emerge from the tunnel above Ember?
The moon
The moon is up when they step out, and they take it for a strange silver lamp. Only later does the sky brighten into the first sunrise either of them has ever seen.
Q 10In The City of Ember, what does Lina Mayfleet buy with money meant for a new coat for Granny?
Colored pencils
Colored pencils are a rare luxury in Ember, and Lina pays ten dollars for just two. While she lingers over them her little sister wanders off, and the treat ends up making her feel ashamed.
Q 11In The City of Ember, which mayor took the Builders' box home and tried to break it open?
The seventh
The seventh mayor was dying and hoped the box held a cure. He only dented it, then died before telling anyone, and it sat forgotten in a closet in the home of Lina's family.
Q 12In The City of Ember, what does the shop kept by Lina Mayfleet's grandmother sell?
Yarn
Yarn is Granny's trade: she unravels worn-out clothes so the thread can be knitted and woven again. With goods running low in Ember, old things are reused until they fall apart.
Q 13In The City of Ember, what do citizens call the pitch-black land beyond the city's trash heaps?
The Unknown Regions
Q 21In The City of Ember, what does Lina Mayfleet's captain decide the pieced-together document must be?
An old recipe
An old recipe is her guess, because one scrap mentions a small steel pan. She tells Lina to throw the thing away and trust that help is on its way.
Q 22Piecing the Builders' paper together, what does Lina Mayfleet first assume the fragment 'Egres' is?
Someone's name
Someone's name is her first guess, as if the paper were instructions for a person called Egres. In fact the word is a clipped piece of an old term for a way out.
Q 23Which gift from Ember's head gardener does Lina Mayfleet keep in a pot and watch for signs of life?
A bean seed
The Unknown Regions defeat every explorer, because Ember has no lamp a person can carry. One clerk who tries comes back sobbing, afraid the dark could hide deep pits or huge rats.
Q 14Which Ember storeroom worker sends Lina Mayfleet to Mayor Cole with word of a delivery at eight?
Looper
Looper turns out to be the mayor's partner in a scheme Lina and Doon later uncover. He also keeps a shop, where he sells Lina two scarce treats at a steep price.
Q 15In The City of Ember, which group insists the Builders will come back to rescue the city?
The Believers
The Believers meet in the streets, sure that help is coming. Lina's own captain is one of them, which is why she waves away the torn document and tells Lina to stop worrying.
Q 16Which gardener realises the torn title of Lina Mayfleet's document says 'Instructions for Egress'?
Clary
Clary spots that the fragment is the start of 'Egress', an old word for a way out. She had already told Lina she was not sure Ember was the only lit place in the dark.
Q 17The green worm that Doon Harrow keeps in a box in The City of Ember finally emerges as what?
A moth
A moth breaks out of the cocoon on the very morning Doon packs to leave. Watching it fly off, he thinks of the word egress and feels he has seen something marvellous.
Q 18Which yearly Ember celebration do Lina and Doon first plan to use to announce the way out?
The Singing
The Singing brings the whole city together once a year to perform three great anthems of Ember. Wanted posters ruin the plan, and Lina hears the crowd from a hiding place instead.
Q 19At the very end of The City of Ember, who finds the bundle that lands at her feet?
Mrs. Murdo
Mrs. Murdo, the kindly neighbour who took in Lina and her little sister after Granny died, picks it up. The book ends as she starts to untie it, leaving Ember's rescue to the sequel.
Q 20Which actress plays Lina Mayfleet in the 2008 film adaptation City of Ember?
Saoirse Ronan
Saoirse Ronan earned an Irish Film and Television Award nomination for the part. The New York Times felt the film wasted her talent, calling her the brilliant young actress from Atonement.
A bean seed holds life inside it, the gardener says, though nobody knows what life is. By the time Lina learns the mayor's secret, hers has sprouted.
Q 24Which fruit, one Lina Mayfleet has heard of but never tasted, does Lizzie Bisco offer her?
Pineapple
Pineapple was a treat Granny tasted as a child, when the storerooms were still full. Lina is tempted, then refuses, deciding it is wrong for a few people to keep the good things for themselves.
Q 25What do the wanted posters in The City of Ember accuse Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow of doing?
Spreading rumors
Spreading rumors is the charge, invented after the two take what they know about the mayor to guards who turn out to be on his side. The posters even offer a reward.
Q 26When the lights fail as Mayor Cole scolds her in The City of Ember, where does Lina Mayfleet flee?
Onto the roof
Onto the roof she goes, a spot she knows from her first day at work. From up there she watches the whole city fall dark and rethinks leaving her little sister behind.
Q 27Which mark on a riverside stone in the Pipeworks shows Lina and Doon where to climb down?
A letter E
A letter E marks the stone, and beside it a ladder drops to a ledge next to the water. Doon had already noticed grooves by the river that looked almost like writing.
Q 28What is found at the pool where Ember's river ends, left by one of the city's first residents?
A diary
A diary, wrapped up and left by the path, tells them how Ember began. Its writer kept it in secret, guessing that one day somebody would need to know.
Q 29In The City of Ember, which supply does a generator worker warn Doon Harrow may run out first?
Light bulbs
Light bulbs are the supply he fears most, since a working generator is useless with nothing left to switch on. Lina has already noticed streets where dead lamps are never replaced.
Q 30Which staple crop in Ember's gardens is being ruined by a new disease in The City of Ember?
Potatoes
Potatoes are turning black-leaved, runny and foul, and nobody in the gardens knows why. Losing a staple on top of emptying storerooms shows Ember is failing in more ways than its lights.