The Green Glass Sea

I don't truthfully remember the last time that I was so enraptured by a book that I grew disappointed whenever I had to set it down. Ellen Klages' The Green Glass Sea did just this for me. 

Set in the early to mid 1940s, her historical fiction novel traces the story of the then top-secret Manhattan Project from a unique perspective - that of the children of the scientists. She brilliantly plays with points of view, using third person limited and switching between two different girls, Dewey and Suze, who eventually come to have a lot more in common than just living together in the secret town of Los Alamos. In doing this, the story becomes much more intimate than most perspectives on the Manhattan Project. Readers hear about how challenging it was to live in a place that did not really exist, how lonely it was to have parents whose important work kept them from their children, how depressing it was to live in a place that was mostly desert, and how difficult it was to keep everything secret.

This personal viewpoint also meant that the event that would traditionally be considered the culmination of the Manhattan Project - the bombing of Hiroshima - is mentioned only in passing on the last page of the novel. The climax of the book (which I will not give away) is a much more personal event for the main characters of the story, and I loved that about it.

I also loved the non-traditional perspective on scientists that The Green Glass Sea offered. To begin with, it defeated the stereotypes of scientists as people who wear white coats, have crazy hair and glasses, and live in their labs. At one point, Dewey explicitly notices this while she is sitting in the dining hall at Los Alamos reading a comic book. "[Dewey] had just gotten to the part where Wonder Woman found the hideout of the bad guy, a Nazi mad scientist who was going to blow up the world. You knew he was a scientist because he wore a long white coat and had a pointy beard and thick glasses. She looked around the room and thought about that. Just about everyone she could see, every man at least, was some kind of scientist in real life. But nobody, not one of them, looked like the one in the comic. No white coats, just T-shirts and plaid shirts and blue jeans." (p. 87)

Not only did The Green Glass Sea validate non-traditional views of scientists' appearances, but also validated female scientists. In addition to the main characters both being girls, one of whom was very interested in building and exploring "gizmos", there is also a strong female scientist in Suze's mother. She is a brilliant chemist and takes great interest in Dewey's "gizmos".

The Green Glass Sea has won a plethora of awards, all of which were well-deserved. I felt for Dewey; I felt for Suze; I was moved to tears on several occasions. I have always loved historical fiction, and I will definitely add this to my list of loved historical fiction books. I would highly recommend this book for upper elementary students, especially in conjunction with a social studies unit on World War II to make it more personal and alive.

So what exactly is the "green glass sea"? You'll have to read it to find out!