The Green Glass Sea

The Bibliography
Klages, Ellen. 2006. The Green Glass Sea. New York: Viking. ISBN 067061341

The Characters
Eleven-year-old Dewey Kerrigan is the main character of The Green Glass Sea. Other characters include her father, a scientist, enemy-turned-friend Suze Gordon, and her parents, also scientists. There are many other minor characters, friends of Dewey, friends of Suze, and lots of scientists and members of the army. There are also minor characters who are not so minor, including Richard "Dick" Feynman, a Nobel-prize winning physicist and quantum mechanic, although in the book, he hadn't won the prize yet, and Robert Oppenheimer, "the father of the atomic bomb."

The Plot
Dewey Kerrigan is the daughter of a scientist who works on the top secret "gadget" in 1943 in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Although she doesn't know what he's working on, no one is allowed to know, she knows it is important. All the children growing up in the unknown Los Alamos know their parents are busy working on this "gadget," but don't find out what it is until after the book is over, on August 6th, 1945. The story is about Dewey growing up while the atomic bomb is being created.

The Setting
1943-1945 Los Alamos, New Mexico

The Theme
The theme of The Green Glass Sea is one of commitment to what one believes in, the love of a young girl for her father, and the need for a family.

The Style
The Green Glass Sea is written in a style appropriate for a military scientist's child in the 40s. Dewey is a smart girl, so she speaks intelligently. The author provides a list of sources in the Author's Note for references and in the Acknowledgments, lists many sources where she retrieved her information.

The Analysis
I enjoyed The Green Glass Sea. Dewey's a smart kid and it was interesting to see what could have been going on in Los Alamos when my granddad was fighting in World War II. I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to wars and what all went on behind the scenes, so I enjoyed reading about life during WWII.

The Review
Ann Cazin (Library Media Connection, April 2007)
Dewey loves to invent, do advanced math, and make discoveries. Her mother left her when she was young and her grandmother has had a stroke, so she must go to live with her father. Dewey ends up in the middle of the desert where everything is hush-hush, but she has found a piece of heaven, searching through the military junkyard and talking with adults that show interest in her inquisitiveness. This book is about the people who worked on the Manhattan Project and the early days of Los Alamos. While Dewey loses her father, she ends up finding a new family. At the end of this story, Dewey and her new family visit the site where the A-bomb was tested; it was so hot that it melted the sands into a sea of green glass. The description of this part of World War II is interesting and provocative. This well-paced story gives us an insight to a different part of the war and how it affected the people that were involved in the Manhattan Project. Recommended.

The Connection
If I were a history teacher, or more of a history buff, I'd share this story with kids learning about WWII, just so they could get the same taste I did when I read it. It could also be a good one to share with an elementary book club, then we could do the past/present question activity that was suggested in our text with Dewey, since she's the same age as the students in the club.