The Green Glass Sea (2 page)

Thanks to Klages's meticulous research, readers gain insight into the culture, food, and reading material of the period. If the novel is read parallel to a unit about the beginning of the cold war, comparisons could be made with books about the consequences of the Hiroshima bombing, such as
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
(Putnam, 1977) or
Mieko and the Fifth Treasure
(Putnam, 1993), both by Eleanor Coerr.

The young protagonists of The Gadget by Paul Zindel and
Where the Ground Meets the Sky
by Jacqueline Davies, two other middle-grade novels that take place in Los Alamos during the 1940s, also try to find out about the secret work on the Hill. Teachers can use these two novels together with
The Green Glass Sea
in literature circles. Students can compare and contrast the main characters, their family situations, and how they each approach their curiosity and suspicion about the gadget as well as how the authors maintain tension and address the science and politics of the time.

After the successful trial of the gadget, Suze says, “So now we'll have the Japs on toast. ” There are other references to the Japanese throughout the book, and teachers can lead students to a discussion about the situation of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Many of the female characters in the book don't comply with the gender roles of the time. Dewey wants to be a scientist and finds a role model in Suze's mother. When asked why she has the book
The Boy Mechanic
, Dewey comments that “they didn't make one for girls. ”

The ending leaves the reader with the following questions: Would a girl in today's world encounter any difficulties if she wanted to become a scientist and spent her spare time building radios? Will it be possible for Dewey to pursue becoming a scientist once she leaves Los Alamos? What might happen to Dewey and Suze in the future?

The novel also offers an opportunity to study the author's craft. Klages's third-person narration alternates in some chapters between Suze's and Dewey's points of view. While the rest of the novel is written in the past tense, the author depicts Dewey's grief over her father's death in the chapter titled “Walking” in the present tense. As a writing activity, students can write a story about two characters in alternating points of view.

The Ultimate Weapon: The Race to Develop the Atomic Bomb
. By Edward T. Sullivan. 2007. Holiday. This informational title about the Manhattan Project with black-and-white photographs of the people involved, the secret cities, and the gadget at the Trinity test site provides all necessary scientific and historical background information for reading
The Green Glass Sea
.

 

Monika Schröder
is the elementary-school librarian at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India.

ELLEN KLAGES
SCOTT O'DELL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH Monday, April 2, 2007

First of all, I want to thank Scott O'Dell and his wife Elizabeth Hall, for founding this award and for recognizing the importance of historical fiction, especially for children. I want to thank Hazel Rochman and Ann Carlson and Roger Sutton, the members of the O'Dell committee, for selecting
The Green Glass Sea
out of the hundreds of amazing books that were published in 2006. I want to thank my editor, Sharyn November, and her boss, Regina Hayes, for taking a chance not only on a first novel, but one that seemed an unlikely topic for a children's book. And all the people at Viking, all the sales reps who were so enthusiastic and hand-sold this book to booksellers and librarians. And thanks to my agent, Michael Bourret, who shepherded it from a manuscript to an object out in the world.

A lot of people think that history is boring. It's just names and dates and facts that you have to memorize for a test. I suspect that I'm preaching to the choir here; I don't think most of the people in the room feel that way. But too many people do.

Up until last October, I was primarily a science fiction writer. Which means I'm in a unique position to recognize that this—[
holds up
GGS
]—is a time machine. Because that's really what we want out of historical fiction. We want to go there. We don't want to be on the outside, looking in. We want the backstage tour. We want to be there as the events of history are unfolding around us.

That's what we want as readers. Most writers are also readers, but for a writer, it's slightly different. If I'm going to spend a year or two of my life someplace in the past, there has to be a hook. We writers are observant magpies, taking shiny bits back to our nests to play with. And we're easily distracted—
ooh, shiny!

For me, that shiny was the green glass. I read one sentence about it in an account of the Trinity Test, and I thought—cool—and I wanted to find out more. And there isn't much more about it, because the glass was a footnote, a side effect. It wasn't all that important to the scientists at the time. But it was what got me hooked. So I read some more books, and in each of them I found another, one sentence, description of the glass, or of people going to go see the glass. And I took those single sentences home and collected them, lined my little magpie nest with them, until I had enough information that I could almost see it, in my mind's eye.

And I wanted to go there.

I wanted to go there more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. But it's gone. It was bulldozed before I was even born, and the only picture I've ever been able to find of it is in black and white.

If I was a painter, I would have made a big color picture, hung it on my wall and looked at it. But I can't even draw. My tools are words. So I wrote myself a story in which I got to go to the green glass sea, in the company of two odd, quirky little girls named Dewey and Suze. And saw it—through their eyes.

Because that's the other important thing about historical fiction. It reminds us that history
isn't
just dates and facts and places. It's people and their lives and their stories. Sometimes it's extraordinary people in ordinary times, changing the world. And sometimes it's ordinary people in extraordinary times, as the world changes around them.

By seeing the past through their eyes—how they live, what they do, how they think—we get a new perspective on the present.

[
Picks up GGS
] If you accept that this is a time machine, then there's one thing you need to know, the one unbreakable law of time travel—you cannot change the past.

But I hope that when you close the cover of
The Green Glass Sea
, and return to your own life, you may discover that the past has changed you.

Thank you.

VIKING
Published by Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U. S. A.
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M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc. )
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R oRL, England

First published in 2006 by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

The last chapter appeared in slightly different form as the short story “The Green Glass Sea”
in the online magazine Strange Horizons (
www. strangehorizons. com
) in 2005.

Copyright © Ellen Klages, 2006

All rights reserved

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

eISBN : 978-0-142-41149-0

 

 

Although this is a work of fiction, the historical events portrayed are quite real, as are the
scientists and personnel of Los Alamos. The author has used history as a stage setting for fictitious
characters, and any resemblance of those characters to actual people is unintentional.

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior
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The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility
for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

To Jane Heller, for childhood talks
on the shelf and pearls in the creek.
To Delia Sherman, my writing sister, who
knows when it's time to send the Goon.
And to my dad, Jack Klages, who lived
through the war I've only read about.

 

 

 

DEWEY KERRIGAN SITS
on the concrete front steps of Mrs. Kovack's house in St. Louis, waiting for her father. He is in Chicago—war work—and she has not seen him since the Fourth of July. It's almost Thanksgiving now. She looks toward the corner every few seconds.

She is small for her age, thin and wiry, with dark, unruly hair and big front teeth that she has not quite grown into. Her eyes are large and gray-green behind a pair of steel-framed glasses. Her right foot is in a brown shoe that laces up one side, her left in an ordinary saddle shoe.

“Oh, for the love of Pete, will you just come inside?” says Mrs. Kovack. She has opened the front door and stands holding a red-striped dishtowel in one hand and a glass mixing bowl in the other. “You're going to catch your death out here. ”

Dewey sighs and looks longingly at the wide wooden porch of her Nana's house, next door, where she lived until last Friday. “I'm fine, ” she says. Mrs. Kovack's house smells like sour pickles and sick-sweet perfume, and she would rather be a little cold. But she doesn't say this, doesn't want to be rude to Mrs. Kovack, who has been doing her good Christian duty by taking Dewey in. Or so she tells Dewey, every chance she gets.