My Penguin sales rep recommended Ellen Klages's The Green Glass Sea (Viking, Oct.), saying the reps chose it as their favorite novel of the list. It's not one of the publisher-proclaimed blockbusters of the fall season, but it's such an interesting read and is just the sort of book that children's booksellers will embrace and handsell. Klages vividly conveys the community of scientists and their families at Los Alamos during the time of the Manhattan Project. And she does it through the eyes of a very inquisitive, scientifically minded 11-year-old girl named Dewey. The title refers to the scientists setting off an explosion so powerful that it melted the sand of the desert into a sea of green glass. This might not be the kind of book kids will pick up on their own right away, but if someone puts it into their hands, they won't put it down until they have finished it.