Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0763629723 ISBN 13: 9780763629724

Publisher: Candlewick Press (MA), 2006

Synopsis

"The author's upbeat, positive tone is refreshing and his enthusiasm about his topic is contagious." -- School Library Journal (starred review)

Pssst! Do you know the difference between a code and a cipher? Can you tell a St. Cyr slide from a Cardano grille? Did you know that the discovery of a substitution cipher caused Mary Queen of Scots to lose her head? Don't look now, but packed into this practical field guide is everything a young person needs to know about the art of concealment -- making and breaking codes, mastering cipher systems, and experimenting with secret writing. Offering plenty of hands-on practice sessions, tips for creating a code-making kit, sidebars on secret codes in history, and an amusing pair of spies to illustrate techniques, Paul B. Janeczko's tantalizing Top Secret won't stay a secret for long. Back matter includes suggestions for further reading, an author's note, an answer key, and an index.

About this title

Review

The author's upbeat, positive tone is refreshing and his enthusiasm about his topic is contagious.
--School Library Journal (starred review)

Thoroughly engrossing.
--FamilyFun

Janeczko gives aspiring codemakers and codebreakers everything they need for staging their own information exchanges. . . . Fascinating historical anecdotes keep things lively, as do LaReau's stylish black-and-white illustrations.
--Booklist (starred review)

About the Author

Paul B. Janeczko (1945-2019) was a poet and teacher who edited numerous award-winning poetry anthologies for young people, including A Poke in the I, A Kick in the Head, A Foot in the Mouth, and The Death of the Hat, all of which were illustrated by Chris Raschka; Firefly July, illustrated by Melissa Sweet; and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems, illustrated by Richard Jones. He also wrote Worlds Afire; Requiem: Poems of the Terezín Ghetto; Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing; Double Cross: Deception Techniques in War; The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from Invisible Ink to CIA Moles, a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults; and Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis.

Jenna LaReau is a graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York. Top Secret is her first book with Candlewick Press. She lives in Massachusetts, where she works as an illustrator and designer.

Edition details

• Publisher: Candlewick Press (MA)
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0763629723
• ISBN 13: 9780763629724
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 144
• Editor: Janeczko Paul B
• Illustrator: Lareau Jenna