The Secret Agent Training Manual: How to Make and Break Top Secret Messages: A Companion to the Secret Agents Jack and Max Stalwart Series

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The Secret Agent Training Manual: How to Make and Break Top Secret Messages: A Companion to the Secret Agents Jack and Max Stalwart Series

eBook(NOOK Kids)

$6.99

eBook(NOOK Kids)
$6.99

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Overview

Want to learn how to make and break TOP SECRET messages like a real spy? If so, this book is for you! In this exciting, award-winning nonfiction companion to the debut series SECRET AGENTS JACK AND MAX STALWART, readers ages 8 - 12 years old can learn behind-the-scenes codebreaking and spy skills.

Inside are more than 80 pages of tips, tricks, and practice exercises for writing and deciphering cryptic communications. You'll learn how to make your own invisible ink, hide your messages, create unbreakable ciphers, and craft your own decoder gadgets. You can use this manual to learn how to exchange top secret notes with friends.

Expanded and republished!

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About the Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781602863408
Publisher:	Running Press Book Publishers
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Series:	Secret Agents Jack and Max Stalwart Nonfiction Series , #1
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	93 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Elizabeth Singer Hunt is best known as the award-winning author of the SECRET AGENT JACK STALWART chapter book series for younger readers. The 14-book series has been named a 'must read' for boys by the British Education Secretary, serialized by BBC Radio, and featured on Virgin Atlantic Airways' international flights.
Elizabeth lives in California with her husband and two children, and is an advocate for the Eco-Soap Bank, a public health nonprofit working to save lives in rural Cambodia.

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Editorial Reviews

Learn how to make and decode top secret messages with this nonfiction workbook, specially designed to accompany the “Secret Agents Jack and Max Stalwart” series. Readers learn over twenty-five spy techniques for keeping secret messages private. They can apply these strategies to send coded messages to a friend or “fellow spy.” At the end, they are challenged to test their skills. The history of cryptography is also described, from ancient Greece thousands of years ago to now. For example, Herodotus is known to have used a special code to warn his people that the Persian army was fast approaching. Drawings and plenty of fill-in boxes are used throughout the manual to encouragers readers to work out presented problems. Readers can write on the pages as they learn. The paper is workbook quality, comparable to that of a coloring book. A glossary and a list of resources are included, as well as answer keys for workbook exercises. Reviewer: Sharon M. Himsl; Ages 8 to 12.

Children's Literature - Sharon M. Himsl

07/03/2017
Publishing simultaneously with the first two books in the Secret Agents Jack and Max Stalwart series, a spin-off of Hunt’s Secret Agent Jack Stalwart chapter books, this informative workbook highlights more than 25 cryptographic techniques. A wide-ranging introductory section traces cryptography to the ancient Greeks and documents the use of codes and ciphers through history. Hunt then shows readers how to make and use invisible ink, perfect their mirror writing, and hide messages in crossword puzzles. More detail-oriented challenges come in the form of letter, number, and symbol ciphers that readers can practice both deciphering and creating. Fans of Hunt’s spy series are a natural audience, but any readers with an interest in codes and ciphers should be intrigued by this accessible introduction. Ages 7–12. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Secret Agent Training Manual:
"...any readers with an interest in codes and ciphers should be intrigued by this accessible introduction."
—Publishers Weekly
Praise for the original Secret Agent Jack Stalwart series:
"Extremely exciting."
—The Guardian
"Kids looking for adventure series now have even more options... [SECRET AGENT JACK STALWART] is action-heavy..."
—Publishers Weekly
"Informative, action-packed, and great fun."
—The Children's Book Review
This page-turner series... takes readers on a wild adventure while they learn a bit about world history and geography."
—Lincoln Journal-Star
"The[se] page-turners intrigue their intended audience with plot twists and exotic settings."
—Florida Times-Union
"The best element of the series are the geographic locations—from China to Italy—that readers get to explore while on the wild ride with [Jack Stalwart]."
—Parent Map

From the Publisher

2017-05-24
Simple directions for using codes, ciphers, and steganography to send secret messages to friends or fellow spies. After opening with an overview of historical cryptography from the "Caesar cipher" and an ancient Chinese script called Nushu (used exclusively by women) to the Enigma machine and other World War II-era coding devices, Hunt proceeds to describe over two dozen ways to hide or disguise messages. Along with substitution codes, letter and number grids, anagrams, a tic-tac-toe cipher, a Vigenère table, and like techniques, she provides recipes for invisible ink, instructions for creating paper decoder bracelets or rings, and templates to copy for an Alberti cipher wheel. Most of the illustrations are charts or simple line drawings, with a sprinkling of human figures (all seem to be white). The author adds frequent practice pages with blank lines and short secret messages to decode, and she closes with a series of longer puzzles (answer key included) in a final "Cryptographic Challenge." But young would-be coders hoping to find more than passing nods to computer programs or cellphone tools—or even that much about modern advances in cryptography—will be disappointed. A reasonably comprehensive handbook, though it's confined to classical low- to no-tech methods. (sources) (Nonfiction. 10-12)

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