Dewey and Suze, two very different young girls (one is mechanically minded, the other more artistic, but both outcast in their community) are coming of age during WW2 on the Los Alamos base. Because their community does not exist, and everything about the "gadget" their parents are working on is top secret (even from the members of the scientists families) this makes coming-of-age a little different, but just as difficult. Klages touches lightly on some of the issues that the children face (one of the older students is trying to apply to college but can't since his high school isn't real) and some of morality issues of making the "gadget" (the nuclear bomb that later is dropped on Japan), but never goes into cumbersome details making this good for ages 10 to 12. However, adults can enjoy this book as much as children.

Ellen Klages’s award-winning debut novel is now in paperback!

It is 1943, and eleven-year-old Dewey Kerrigan is en route to New Mexico, to live with her mathematician father. Soon she arrives at a town that, officially, doesn’t exist. It is called Los Alamos, and it is abuzz with activity, as scientists and mathematicians from all over America and Europe work on the biggest secret of all—“the gadget.” None of them—not J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project; not the mathematicians and scientists; and least of all, Dewey—know how much “the gadget” is about to change their lives.

Ellen Klages lives in San Francisco, California.

Imprint: Puffin
Distributor: Penguin Group USA, Inc
Publication Date: 05-01-2008
Pages: 352
Measurements: 7.68in X 4.96in X 0.94in X 0.58lb