When Two Books Collide...

A few weeks ago I was speaking with our children's librarian, Miss
Robin, about a plagiarism issue a friend of mine from the UK is having.
This apparently made her think of two very similar books she had read
that were published only a year apart. She became very excited about the
matter, found both books, and requested that I read them to see what I
thought. The first book was entitled Where the Ground Meets the Sky and the second The Green Glass Sea.



Since I was in-between books I took them home and decided to compare the
two. Both books were set in the 1940's during World War II and happened
to be about the secret facility in Los Almos where scientists and
mathematicians from around the world were working
to create the atomic bomb. After reading both books, I came to the
conclusion that no plagiarism was involved, but I did understand why
Miss Robin might have thought there was. Each book used a young girl who
was above average intelligence for the main character, each book had a
cat and a dog mentioned, each book had a group of boys with a secret
club house,  each book had a second young girl totally opposite the
first girl as a second main character, and each book used similar
terminology. The terminology similarities make sense to me since each
author was clearly using words and terms from the nineteen forties, but
there were enough differences in the writing and style of  each book to
rule out plagiarism.



In case you are wondering what I thought about the books in general, I will give a short review for each. I read Where the Ground Meets the Sky
first, so I will begin with it. I love Jacqueline Davies very
descriptive style of writing which pulled me in from the beginning. It
was a superbly well written book about a horrific true life event, but I
was saddened that the main character's mother seemed to be either an
atheist or one of those people who simply can't decide what to believe.
As a Christian, I would have preferred to see a character who believed
in something, but that aside it was still a well written story. The
ending is quite sad and has the mother unable to cope with what her
husband had helped to create, but that is probably a realistic outcome
for this chapter in mankind's history.



Despite its award winning status, I didn't enjoy The Green Glass Sea
by Ellen Klages nearly as well. This was not because it was poorly
written, but because it was written in either a different person or tense then what people normally write in. The unusual use of person or tense kept
throwing me when I read. I did keep reading, however, and found that
this book also had a sad ending with the main character's father being
killed in an automobile accident.







Although both these books seemed historically accurate for fictional
stories and both portray sad situations that were probably accurate to
the time period, I personally tend to like happier endings. But if you
don't mind sad endings, then perhaps you might want to check out these pieces of historical fiction for yourselves.



So ends another episode of Kids Korner with me, Children's Author Aileen Stewart. Join me next week for another exciting episode same krazy time, same krazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal blog Aileen's Thoughts any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, and life in general.
www.BooksByAmanda.com