The Green Glass Sea

Bibliography

Klages, Ellen. 2006. The Green Glass Sea. New York, NY: Penguin Group ISBN 0-670-06134-4

Plot Summary

Dewey Kerrigan is not like other girls her age. She likes to invent and loves math. Used to hopping between relative's homes while her father works on a secret "gadget" for the army during WWII, Dewey is ecstatic when she finally gets to live with him. Life on base is different than anticipated, however, but Dewey perseveres as she makes new friends, inventions and discoveries about herself. 

Critical Analysis

Although the setting of WWII runs deeply throughout the book, the plot of The Green Glass Sea is more so about Dewey, a young girl facing the struggles of a deformed leg, a love of "boy" things, constantly moving around and her developing relationship with her new roommate Suze. Despite the obstacles in Dewey's life she is a fantastic example for young girls because she does not dwell on any of them. She does not let the fact that one leg is shorter than the other stop her from doing much and does not hesitate to explain the circumstances of her childhood injury. She makes no apologies for her draw towards the mechanical inner-workings of objects or her love of numbers and math. Her nomadic existence clearly shaped her to be a strong, confident young girl. 

Klages dances around the development of the atomic bomb, never definitively informing the reader what the "gadget" is capable of, but not exactly ignoring it by describing "the huge green sea" the test run left behind and how "it was so hot that it melted the ground" and was "hotter than the sun itself." She also mentions its intention through the naive character Suze and how "it'll melt all the Japs." This approach keeps the book appropriate for younger ages, but gives enough information that older children can look further into the repercussions of the bomb. 

Review Excerpts

Scott O'Dell Award 2007

Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award Nominee 2009

"The novel occasionally gets mired down in detail, but the characters are exceptionally well drawn, and the compelling, unusual setting makes a great tie-in for history classes." -John Green, Booklist

Connections

*Discuss the beginning of WWII before reading the book up until the first year of the book, 1943. After reading the book discuss what happened the years following the book. Discuss how Dewey and Suze might have felt about the bomb after seeing its aftermath. Discuss how Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, Mr. Kerrigan and other scientists might have felt.

*Pair with nonfiction books concerning other aspects of the war, such as rations and women working to take the place of men at war.