White Sands, Red Menace

by Ellen Klages

Book Overview

It is 1946, and the events of "The Green Glass Sea" have changed the world'and Dewey Kerrigan's life. She's now living near the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico with the Gordon family. Dr. Gordon is working on rockets that will someday go to the moon; Mrs. Gordon is working on stopping the Bomb. Meanwhile, Dewey and her ?sister, ? Suze, share secrets, art, and science as they adjust to high school in an isolated desert town. Then, like a different...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670062359
• ISBN13: 9780670062355
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

Courtesy of Mother Daughter Book Club.com

It's such a pleasure to read a sequel that lives up to and possibly even surpasses the original. White Sands, Red Menace, Ellen Klages's follow up to The Green Glass Sea is a wonderful continuation of Suze Gordon and Dewey Kerrigan's story. When The Green Glass Sea ends, Dewey's dad has died and the Gordons have taken her in. With World War II over and the atom bomb no longer a secret, they move from Los Alamos to Alamogordo, New Mexico, where Suze's dad is one of the General Electric scientists working with the Army to perfect a rocket that can go into space and carry a nuclear bomb. After seeing the results of their work in Los Alamos, Suze's mom, Terry Gordon, works to let the world know of the dangers of atomic bombs. She's fighting a rising tide of Americans' fascination with all things atomic. Suze and Dewey are starting all over again at a new school and hoping to fit in better than they did at Los Alamos. They have each other, but they hope to make new friends as well. Klages has done a masterful job of capturing the time period and the small town in New Mexico in which the story takes place. It was a time when kids had a lot of freedom to roam, time on their hands and not a lot of money or electronic attractions. This often meant they had to get creative to kill their boredom. Dewey's interest and ability in science pairs well with Suze's interest and ability in art. In their attic room, they go to work on a wall that showcases both their talents. The story moves at a leisurely pace that's somewhat like the slow summer days the girls experience at the beginning of the book, and I found myself matching my reading pace to their exploits. I also found myself dreaming of a time that was simpler in many ways and more complicated in others. There are also plenty of family dynamics for mothers and daughters to discuss: the tension between Suze's parents as her mom becomes more pacifist and her dad is caught up in the atomic craze. The tension between the two girls over parental love and attention and what makes a family. The tension between whites and those of Mexican descent in this small New Mexican town. It all adds up to a great book to read and talk about.

Courtesy of Teens Read Too

Rocket this. Atomic-powered that. They are all the rage in the United States during the post-War era. Dewey and Suze have moved with Suze's scientist parents to New Mexico. Phil, Suze's dad, works endlessly on a new project -- a rocket that could eventually land on the moon while Terry, Suze's mom, obsesses over her mission against the Bomb which both she and Phil created. Dewey and Suze love working on "the wall" in their new bedroom. They tinker, build, and add more and more to the carefully constructed contraptions, even though girls aren't supposed to be interested in things like that. When Dewey's long-lost mother shows up, Dewey struggles to understand the meaning of family. Take a trip back in time and be fascinated by people and events that created history and helped shape the world as we know it. Reviewed by: Dianna Geers

Wonderful Sequel

I cracked this sequel to The Green Glass Sea with no little trepidation. I've come to expect sophomore slump from YA books lately. I needn't have fretted; Klages hit this one out of the park. I think I like it better than TGGS despite the absence of Dick Feynman. Werhner von Braun (offstage) is hardly a substitute. Imagine, if that's my biggest quibble with this book, how good it is. Klages covers family and its arcane permutations while ably handling adolescence, what it was like to be a nontraditional girl in the 40s, the repercussions of Hiroshima, and how it felt to know that the people your dad worked with had been Nazis in the not too distant past. And a first kiss, too. There were so many balls in the air in this book it makes my mind boggle that the flow of the narrative was seamless. A masterpiece.

"So how could ordinary blood be stronger?"

When authors choose historical moments in time to set their stories against, surely the temptation must be to go for the big shiny moments, yes? The Alamo. The sinking of the Titanic. Gigantic wars. Dramatic moments in human history are the natural lure and there's nothing wrong with that. It's natural. So what are we to make of the author that eschews all that for the seemingly less interesting eras? Say, for example, 1946? World War II is over and America hasn't fully bought into McCarthyism quite yet. There aren't any spies or big battles to cover. Instead there's something more insidious. The feel of a nation trying to do what is right, but also getting sucked into the fear and paranoia that will cause countless problems a couple years down the line. To write something this subtle without boring a child audience takes a deft hand, and author Ellen Klages is up to the challenge. Having already established her setting and characters in the Scott O'Dell Award winning book The Green Glass Sea, Klages now turns her sights on the aftermath of WWII in America and the effects of the time period on cultural and personal relations. A little slow to start, once this sequel gets moving there's no stopping it. It's been eight months since World War II ended. Eight months and in that time Dewey Kerrigan has fitted in nicely with her friend Suze Gordan's family. Now they've moved from Los Alamos to Alamogordo, New Mexico because of Mr. Gordon's current work on the government's rocket program. Things are progressing fairly quickly for the girls as well. They're both still fascinated by mixing Suze's artistic talent with Dewey's scientific bent, but they're also growing up. Suze makes friends with a Mexican-American girl and her family, Dewey is friends (or more?) with a boy who shares her technical bent. But in the meantime tensions are brewing. Is Dewey closer to Suze's scientific mom than she is? Are Mr. and Mrs. Gordan going to divorce over their different beliefs? Why is Mrs. Gordan feeling so ill? And who is this strange motorcycle riding woman who's just driven into town looking for Dewey of all people? Mysteries are answered and realities changed in an America where nothing is as straightforward as it seems. The book begins slowly, I just have to tell you right now. Unless children have read its predecessor, I'm not altogether certain they'll stick with the first few chapters where nothing much really happens unless they're pushed a little. Yet as it goes on, White Sands builds its own momentum. But to find the right child audience for this book, you have to know your reader. In Green Glass Sea Dewey is reading Caddie WoodlawnCaddie Woodlawn and only enjoying the section where Caddie starts fixing clocks. There are lots of kids like Dewey out there who prefer novels with science, non-fiction, politics, and realism. These are the children that visibly cringe when you move a Harry Potter novel into their physical sphere. The ones who find a great dea