Today the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction was announced.
The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages (Viking Children's Books) is the winner of the 2007 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.
The award is presented to a children's or young adult book published in English by a U.S. publisher and set in the Americas. A standing committee (Hazel Rochman, chair; Ann Carlson; and Roger Sutton) selects the winner. Established by the late historical fiction writer, Scott O'Dell, the award is administered by his wife, Elizabeth Hall.
In November 1943, 11-year-old Dewey Kerrigan travels west to live with her mathematician father in Los Alamos, New Mexico. She is a budding inventor, and she thrives; there are adults like Richard Feynman and Enrico Fermi who love to talk about science and mechanics as much as she does, and they take her seriously. Her classmates are less understanding, but she does manage to develop a complicated friendship with Suze Gordon, another outsider. The girls' daily battles are set against the radio news of war, and Los Alamos's internal mysteries-what is the top-secret "gadget" their parents are working on?-and as tension builds, readers of this gripping story will discover with Dewey the truth of the secret weapon that will change the world. There's no sermonizing, and Dewey is no convenient mouthpiece for a history lesson.
Instead, Klages gets completely inside her complicated protagonist to make readers see the world as Dewey sees it: dangerous and unpredictable, and made only partially manageable by science.
I have not yet read this book, but plan to soon. Let me know what you think of it if you have. (Age 9 and up.)
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1 comment:
well i have not read this book yet... still i must say i would love to read it.... thanks for the information u have shared here about the announcement of the Scott O'Dell Award... i would surely drop by your blog sometimes again... u can too drop by mine...!!!
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