City Of Ember

The epitaph on my tombstone may well read: He hired animal-handler Joan Embery as the San Diego Zoo’s ambassador and set her on the road to fame.

I expended 50 years in a colorful PR and journalism career. But my naming Joan to the new zoo post and placing her on “The Tonight Show” seems to be what folks most remember.

And why not? Joan’s closely 100 appearances with Johnny Carson made her a intimate face to millions of Americans. Snuggled by snakes and loved by leopards, she was a natural success at bringing the fun, excitement and drama of the wild-animal world into viewers’ homes.

Her climb to celebrity status started out with her firstborn booking on “The Tonight Show” in 1970 with the young elephant she’d taught to paint. When artist, Carol, hesitated to perform, then turned with brush in trunk, swiping it over Johnny’s crotch, it convulsed the audience and Ed McMahon. Joan, 21, became a “regular” over the next four decades, providing millions of dollars in advert to our then-financially-strapped park.

(Little Carol subsequently painted on her poster board for the 12 million viewers that night – and gained notoriety as our artistic elephant for years, benefitting tons of publicity!)

As Joan’s fame spread, she appeared on other network shows with zoo residents and did hundreds of TV and radio interviews. She subsequently traveled to Africa, England, Australia and other elements of the world, spreading wildlife conservation messages, while encouraging our world-famous tourist attraction.

Truth be known, Joan became our second zoo ambassador. I goofed in picking the first. And, of course, there was never a need for a third. Joan made publicizing and furthering the San Diego Zoo a career for the next 35 years, until her recent retirement.

In the late ’60s, the zoo experienced a steady attendance decline (due in portion to contest from the new SeaWorld marine park). Our PR Department was given the task of coming up with ways to attract more visitors to our burgeoning menagerie.

Consequently, as head of the zoo’s advertizing division since ’65, I proposed selecting and training a young girl to serve as zoo ambassador. After due consideration, the board of trustees and zoo conductor approved a little budget for a year’s trial.

My idea had in truth sprung from an earlier visit to our Children’s Zoo by a young, female Disneyland roving ambassador. If it was good sufficient for originative talent Walt, I do not forget thinking, then why not someone similar for us?

Several hundred girls responded to our primary call for a photogenic young woman, well-spoken, with a love of wildlife. The chosen one would give talks, take VIPS on zoo tours and make appearances at events such as the city’s upcoming 200th anniversary.

Long story short, I managed the basi time to pick the wrong applicant, one who was not good at handling animals, nervous in regards to public speaking and didn’t know the city well.

At the end of her year, we went back to the drawing board. I revisited our resume file and put the word out publicly again to mild response. One day it was pointed out that a good nominee worked right under our noses in the Children’s Zoo – Joan Embery.

The zoo had hired college student Joan, 18, to work with the baby animals. So with assorted years’ experience underneath her belt by 1969, I had gotten to know and admire her devotion to our orphaned wildlife and her job.

I swore that Joan could talk to the animals-and vice versa. I knew she could effortlessly spot the pout of an insulted elephant. In fact one of her elephant friends would in truth stick out a foot to trip Joan as she ran by.

Several times, the always-cheery Miss Embery had invited me to come into an animal’s enclosure with her. She would offer interesting bits of data – such as the reason most zoos have only female elephants is because bulls are too dangerous when they are in musth for the duration of mating season. She told me their hormones rage to the degree they may pull up concrete, or even undertake to kill their keepers.

And I recall once looking at in awe as our future “ambassador” stuck her hand in an elephant’s mouth to pat a wiggly, pink tongue. “It’s a greeting to them – like shaking hands,” she explained as I watched, jaw agape. “Go in front – undertake it!” she urged. But I was too chicken, resolving I didn’t want to be that friendly.

For the second round, I named Joan the zoo’s next ambassador. And in subsequent years, I watched with pride at the way she handled herself in public and in media appearances. Her true love of, and devotion to, wild life, came all over to audiences, giving her a fame she didn’t seek, while the zoo and her wildlife causes prospered.

And galore Carson fans today still do not forget the “Tonight Show” segment when Joan let Johnny hold a little marmoset, which climbed up and relieved itself on top of the widely known and esteemed host’s head. Johnny’s expression is captured on reruns of “The Best of Carson.”

It topped even the night when we took “Dudley Duplex,” a baby two-headed king snake, to the NBC show. It slithered up Johnny Carson’s dress shirt sleeve to hide and wouldn’t come out. Johnny kept calling up his sleeve: “Come out, fellas – come out now!”

Selecting the wild-life-loving teen-ager as Zoo Ambassador rightfully ranks, in retrospect, as the smartest (or luckiest move I ever made). Other than marrying my wife of 60 years!

City Of Ember

NOW A MAJOR motion picture starring Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, Martin Landau, Saoirse Ronan, and Harry Treadaway! This tie-in edition of The City of Ember features a movie-art cover and an 8-page photo insert. Jeanne DuPrau’s instant classic tells the story of the great, underground city of Ember, designed as a last refuge for the humane race. But when the storerooms run out of feed and the lights commence to fail, it’s up to two teens, Lina and Doon, to decipher the fragments of an ancient parchment and find a way out of Ember.

ReviewIt is always night in the city of Ember. But there is no moon, no stars. The only light for the duration of the regular twelve hours of “day” comes from floodlamps that cast a yellowish glow over the streets of the city. Beyond are the pitch-black Unknown Regions, which no one has ever explored because an understanding of fire and electricity has been lost, and with it the idea of a Moveable Light. “Besides,” they tell each other, “there is nowhere but here” Among the some other things the persons of Ember have forgotten is their past and a direction for their future. For 250 years they have lived pleasantly, because there has been a great deal of everything in the immense storerooms. But now there are more and more empty shelves–and more and more times when the lights flicker and go out, leaving them in terrifying blackness for long minutes. What will occur when the generator in the end fails?

Twelve-year-old Doon Harrow and Lina Mayfleet seem to be the only people who are worried. They have just been assigned their life jobs–Lina as a messenger, which leads her to noesis of a heap of unsettling secrets, and Doon as a Pipeworker, repairing the plumbing in the tunnels beneath the city where a river roars through the darkness. But when Lina finds a very old paper with enigmatic “Instructions for Egress,” they use the vantages of their jobs to begin to puzzle out the horrendous and dangerous way to the city of light of which Lina has dreamed. As they set out on their mission, the haunting setting and breathless action of this stunning introductory novel will have teens clamoring for a sequel. (Ages 10 to 14) –Patty Campbell

City of Ember is now a major motion picture (releasing in October 2008) starring Bill Murray, Tim Robbins, Martin Landau, and galore more. Enjoy these images from the film, and click the thumbnails to see a larger effigy in a new browser window.

From BooklistGr. 5-7. Ember, a 241-year-old, ruined domed city surrounded by a dark unknown, was built to make sure that persons would proceed to subsist on Earth, and the instructions for getting out have been lost and forgotten. On Assignment Day, 12-year-olds leave school and receive their lifetime occupation assignments. Lina Mayfleet becomes a messenger, and her friend Doon Harrow ends up in the Pipeworks underneath the city, where the failing electric generator has been ineffectually patched together. Both Lina and Doon are convinced that their survival means finding a way out of the city, and after Lina discovers pieces of the instructions, she and Doon work together to interpret the fragmented document. Life in this postholocaust city is well limned–the ordinary blackouts, the feed shortage, the public panic, the search for answers, and the activenesses of the powerful, who are taking selfish vantage of the situation. Readers will relate to Lina and Doon’s vision and courage in the face of unfortunate odds. Sally Estes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review“An electric debut. Lina and Doon’ search parallels the universal adolescent quest for answers.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred