Image: Abrams Books
Happy Wednesday! I just looked at the calendar and noticed that students will be back in school in three Wednesdays! We teachers are back on the first for two teacher workdays bookending the Labor Day weekend. Summer break is winding down! My summer reading has contained more than the usual big books written for adults, so I am way behind for my GR goal for the year.
Waiting on Wednesday features Spying on Spies: How Elizebeth Smith Friedman Broke the Nazis' Secret Code by Marissa Moss. I am super-excited to read this not only because I enjoy Ms. Moss' books, but also because I learned about Elizebeth Smith Friedman through a picture book! #nevertoooldforpicturebooks! Code Breaker, Spy Hunter: How Elizebeth Smith Friedman Changed the Course of Two World Wars by Laurie Wallmark is part of my sixth grade picture book biography unit and a popular choice among sixth grade students! I always tell students that a picture book biography can inform, but also inspire reading further. Ms. Moss' fuller length biography will be the perfect next step for students.
Her picture book biography of Allan Pinkerton, The Eye That Never Sleeps, is also popular in the unit, and I really enjoyed her biography of Lise Meitner, The Woman Who Split the Atom.
Spying on Spies isn't due out until March 12, 2024, but that leaves plenty of time to read Ms. Moss' other biographies. Here's the publisher synopsis:
One of the founders of US cryptology who would eventually become one of the world’s greatest code breakers, Elizebeth Smith Friedman (1892–1980) was a brilliant mind behind many important battles throughout the 20th century, saving many lives through her intelligence and heroism. Whip-smart and determined, Elizebeth displayed a remarkable aptitude for language and recognizing patterns from a young age. After getting her start by looking for linguistic clues to the true authorship of Shakespeare’s writings, she and her husband, William Friedman, were tasked with heading up the first government code-breaking unit in America, training teams and building their own sophisticated code systems during the lead-up to World War I.
Elizebeth’s solo career was even more impressive. She became the Treasury Department’s and Coast Guard’s first female codebreaker and created her own top-notch codebreaking unit, where she trained and led many male colleagues. During Prohibition in the 1920s, her work solving and intercepting coded messages from mobsters and criminal gangs lead to hundreds of high-profile criminal prosecutions, including members of Al Capone’s gang. Her crowning achievement came during World War II, when Elizebeth uncovered an intricate network of Nazi spies operating in South America, a feat that neither law enforcement nor intelligence agencies had been able to accomplish. Despite her unparalleled accomplishments, she was largely written out of history books and overshadowed by her husband. Only in very recent years has her name begun to receive the attention it deserves, including the US Coast Guard naming a ship in her honor and the US Senate passing a 2019 resolution to honor her life and legacy.
Back matter includes codes for kids to learn!
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