For example, Suze’s mom makes Ovaltine in a saucepan on the stove, Dewey has an Erector set, and long distance travel is primarily by bus or train. The actions of the characters and the events in the story are true to the time period. This novel leaves the minutiae to the nonfiction title and focuses on the story without getting bogged down in details. The difference in the two comes in the details.

When this book is read in tandem with a nonfiction account of the same subject matter, Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin, it is almost at parts as if the books are one and the same. Klages presents the history in this book accurately and seamlessly weaves it into the narrative for a smoothly flowing story. Even though the essence of the characters is relevant in 2015, they still represent the 1940s through their choice of words, their attire, their pastimes, and the household products they use. Young readers will be able to see themselves or a classmate in one of the characters and some may identify with having a parent who is largely absent. The children fend for themselves more often than not since all the adults on “the Hill”, as it is called, are working non-stop trying to create “the gadget” (atomic bomb). The adults all love their children very much and work hard, almost too hard, to provide for them. She goes along with their mean girl routines when she thinks it will help her get into their good graces, but deep down she knows it is wrong and is a good person. The secondary female character, Suze, is the girl on the fringe of the popular group trying desperately to be accepted to their inner circle full-time. The main character Dewey, is the smart, nerdy girl who no one in class likes, save for the couple of kids who can see past the exterior.

The characters in Klages’s novel are incredibly real and easy to identify with. What happens after Dewey goes to stay with the Gordon’s changes not only Dewey’s life forever, but the world as it was known at that time. She has trouble fitting in at school and keeps mostly to herself until her father has to go away for a few weeks and she is forced to stay at the home of a girl from her class who she knows does not like her. Dewey gets to know the people working on this secret “gadget” over the next few years and spends a lot of time on her own since her dad is always working. ISBN 0670061344ĭewey Kerrigan lives with her grandmother, but when she has to go into a home, Dewey is shipped off to New Mexico where her father is working on a secret project for the army in the early 1940’s in a place that does not officially exist.

The green glass sea by ellen klages