MMGM- The Bletchley Riddle and Side Quest

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Unleashing Readers

Sepetys, Ruta, and Sheinkein, Steve. The Bletchley Riddle

October 8, 2024 by Viking Books for Young Readers

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

In about June of 1940, we meet 14-year-old Lizzie Novis, who is in a difficult circumstance; her Polish born Jewis father died when she was young, her mother, who worked for the US embassy in Poland, is presumed dead, and her grandmother, who lives in Cleveland, is trying to get her to leave England. Lizzie doesn't want anything to do with her grandmother's posh life in the US, and suspects that her mother is still alive. She manages to evade Mr. Fleetwood, her grandmother's estate steward who is supposed to chaperone her to Ohio via ship, and goes to the address in London her older brother Jakob has given her. Jakob, a talented mathemetician, is working at Bletchley Park, and the address Lizzie has is a decoy. When she shows up there, Jakob has to come and retrieve her. He takes her to the Colonel at Bletchley, who doesn't give Lizzie a choice; if she has to stay with Jakob, she has to sign the Official Secrets Act, work as a messenger at Bletchley, and lay low. While this impedes her work finding her mother, she enjoys being at the top secret installation, and enjoys living with Jakob in his tiny room at the Shoulder of Mutton. Colin, the son of the owners of the inn, is a good source of information as well as a helpful ally. Jakob knows more than he has told Lizzie; his mother visited him, and left him a coded message; Lizzie is not telling Jakob that she has her mother's journal. Jakob is working on the Enigma machine with other cryptanalysts, and wonders if his mother is, in fact, working as a spy. The fact that an MI5 agent, Jarvis, is following him and asking questions, reinforces this view. Lizzie manages to befrienf Marion, who is one of the women working at Bletchley, and even manages to go to a US embassy party with one of her mother's coworkers, and tries to ask Ambassador Joseph Kennedy about her. She gets no information, and is angry when she finds that her grandmother has sent Fleetwood back to get her. She manages to flee through a clever ruse, and Jakob is suprised when she shows up. When the two talk about their mother and finally share what they know, they think she has left them a message that the need to decipher. It takes some time, and relies on a shared memory code involving goulash, but they eventually figure out a time, date, and location. When they get there, however, they don't find their mother. They do find out information about her, and realize that they have to keep what they know secret, just as all of the work they do at Bletchley must never be discussed. Due to her uncanny ability to notice things, Lizzie becomes an assistant to the Colonel, and doesn't have to go to Cleveland after all. 

Strengths: Even though I've said that there are too many middle grade World War II books, I have been waiting for a fiction book about Bletchley. Sheinkein and Sepetys both have strong research chops for this era, and they put together a well constructed, seamless novel that gets a teen girl involved at the site! There's a little light romance, some harrowing car trips, lots of clever code using articles from the newspaper, and good details about both spying and everyday life. There are even some pictures and reproductions of period ephemera like ration books and phone book listings that were a nice surprise. Of course, the writing is good as well, and I particularly loved this line (from the uncorrected proof): "The sky is blue, but the city is the color of war." 
Weaknesses: As an adult, it felt like Lizzie was taking too many chances and wasn't good about security. She does say, right up front, that she is not good about keeping secrets, but during the war, I imagine people were much more willing to keep them. Of course, there wouldn't have been as good a story if she had been careful, or nicer to Mr. Fleetwood. Since I am her grandmother's age and live in Ohio, maybe I just felt more a kinship with her! 

What I really think: It's high time there's a middle grade fiction book about Bletchley to go along with Fleming's Enigma Girls and Barone's Unbreakable: The Spies Who Cracked the Nazis' Secret Code nonfiction titles, as well as the huge number of adult books and television shows on the topic. This is definitely one of those books that would have delighted me as a tween; I suspect I would have tried to purchase my own copy, and would have reread it frequently, imagining myself in Lizzie's Oxfords. Definitely purchasing for my school collection. 

Sattin, Samuel and Steenz (Illustrator).

Side Quest: A Visual History of Roleplaying Games 

October 8, 2024 by Versify 

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

I am not the proper person to write this review. I hate playing games. Why? Well, this book told me. It said that society tells us that pretend play is something only kids should do, but games allow adults to engage in it. When I was a child, I was given tiny household implements like irons and Bissell brooms. Games were a waste of time, but I was allowed to sew, which is my version of gaming. 

I'm "game adjacent". My children LOVE games, and there were at least two different RISK sets in my house at some point. My students are always so sure that I can teach them Dungeons & Dragons. My college roommate routinely had friends over playing war games for something like fourteen hours at a time. I fed them and made everyone call their girlfriends at 8:00 pm.. I support games. Just do not make me play!

This epiphany does help me understand that when people love games, whether it's board games, role playing games, or video games, the emotions must be as equally ingrained in them. For game lovers, especially, Dungeons and Dragons aficionados, this is a must-have, complete history of Table Top Role Playing Games in the way that Brian "Box" Brown's The He-Man Effect is the best history of children's television I've ever read. Fans of Boyce's Dungeons and Drama should just buy a case of these to have on hand to give as gifts to everyone they know. 

The book itself is so packed with information about every facet of gaming. It talks about the influence of mythology and storytelling on the process of gaming, discusses a variety of games from various cultures, draws historic parallels between war and game strategy (with a side mention of the warlike competition of sports!), and mentions so many different game innovators from history that I just couldn't keep track of all of them. I can see this being a huge boon to a gaming obsessed kid who wants to do a history project on the 1950s game Diplomacy or Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson creating Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. 

The authors are characters in the book, and their insights into how games affective them personally are a great touch. This reminded me a bit of the History Comics, in that there were five new interesting facts on every page! This is an absolutely essential purchase for any middle school and high school library. There are always students who become interested in games at these ages, and crave all the information they can find on them. 

I feel compelled to mention that Mazes & Monsters (1982, starring a very young Tom Hanks!) is streaming on Tubi, because it pops into my head every time someone mentions D&D!