It's
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
at
at
and #IMWAYR day
at
Totally True Tales from World War II (Spy School Secret Files)
November 10, 2026 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Copy provided by Young Adult Books Central
Ben Ripley, the main character of Gibbs' Spy School series, wants to shed some light on the history of spy craft. After a brief mention of the history of espionage, he concentrates on the creation of the US involvement in World War II in 1941, when the need for the US to gather intelligence grew. He highlights "Wild" Bill Donovan, whom President Roosevelt made the Coordinator of Information, and runs from there.
There are chapters on research and analysis, recruitment and training, and even Operation Torch, which saw Ralph Bunche, a professor and expert in North African History, involved in this effort to help the British secure the area. Once the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was created and got off the ground, there are plenty of spy antics to discuss! Mini biographies of figures like Julia Child, movie director John Ford, and architect Eero Saarinen, as well as lesser known but just as impressive people, paint a picture of the depth and breadth of US intelligence during the War and give glimpses of many of the investigations and missions.
Readers unfamiliar with initiatives like cracking the Enigma Code might be enticed to pick up further books like Sepetys and Sheinkein's fictional The Bletchley Riddle or Barone's nonfiction Unbreakable: The Spies Who Cracked the Nazis' Secret Code (which is mentioned in the afterword!). There's more information about the storied and fascinating Virginia Hall (who has been highlighted in Purnell's Agent Most Wanted: The Never-Before-Told Story of the Most Dangerous Spy of World War II and Friddell's The Mysterious Virginia Hall: World War II's Most Dangerous Spy), but other women spies who aided the war effort are also included. Missions behind enemy lines are detailed, as well as propaganda and my very favorite-- research and development. It's intriguing to read about how equipment like miniature cameras and hidden guns were invented and used!
D-Day is portrayed as the ultimate "con", the culmination of the efforts of so many. Of course, after the war there was less need for concentrated espionage, and the OSS was shut down. It didn't end so much as evolve, and many people who played a role in the OSS were present when the Central Intelligence Agency was created.
The afterword was fascinating. Gibbs has written a number of spy novels, and managed to get invited to the CIA museum, which is only accessible to employees of the organization or their guests. He managed to gather so much information that the Spy School Secret Files is going to be a series! This is a shorter book, and perfect for readers who enjoyed Scholastic Focus titles like Hopkinson's World War II Up Close: They Battled in Blizzards, Race Against Death: The Greatest POW Rescue of World War II, They Saved the Stallions, or titles about spy craft like Spradlin's Close Calls: How Eleven US Presidents Escaped from the Brink of Death or the late Paul Janeczko's The Dark Game or Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis.
October 6, 2026 by Creston Books
Copy provided by the publisher
Born in 1900, Cecilia Payne had a few challenges. Her father died when she was young, and there was only enough money to send her brother to college. She was very interested in science and the natural world, and wanted to get a college degree from Cambridge years before they actually awarded them to women. She did complete studies at Cambridge and also went to Harvard, although she had to get her degree from Radcliffe College. She became an astronomer after studying botany, and ended up being extremely talented in the field. She married Russian-born astrophysicist Sergei Illarionovich Gaposchkin in 1934, and had three children. She kept her maiden name as a middle name because she had published a fair amount of work before her marriage, and relied on her husband, whose career did not go as well as hers, to raise their children. She was very accomplished in a field that was not welcoming to women, and opened the doors for other women to enter the field. She died in 1979.
This was an interestingly arranged biography. Moss incorporates her illustrations throughout the book; they are the same style as her ones for the Amelia's Notebook series, if anyone still remembers that series from twenty years ago. The style is very conversational and fast moving, and Cecilia's scientific achievements are interspersed with information about her personal life. This is a short book (86 pages without the end notes, glossary, etc.) but is full of information.
I do wish that the book had been a little larger, so that the font wouldn't have been so small. The cover would have been a bit more appealing if Cecilia's face weren't so washed out; surely a simple color correction could have been done so she didn't look so ghostly!
This is a good choice to have in a middle school library alongside other books about female scientists, like Acevedo's Path to the Stars: My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Scientist, Fletcher's Wonder Women of Science : Twelve Geniuses Who Are Currently Rocking Science, Technology, and the World, Bolden's Black Lives: Great Minds of Science, and Ignotofsky's Women in Science.
No comments:
Post a Comment