I'm sorry this one is out of print.
Although I hate the cover
(it looks so posed, and like something out of the 1950's!)
I'm proud of the book.
It was an ABA Pick-of-the-List when it was released by Lothrop in 1990,
and readers do like it.
Fortunately, there are copies in a lot of libraries, and a number of
used copies available on the web.
I won't spoil the story by telling you much about it - hey,
it's about secrets! - but I will say that one of the secrets
Mark learns is that he can easily learn to sound out the Russian alphabet,
and use that alphabet as a secret code.
(The second line of the title isn't a Russian word - it's
just the English word "secrets" written in code!)
Mark's key to that alphabet, at the end of the book,
will let you learn to use that code too.
But that alphabet doesn't have one letter that makes the sound that we usually write as "j". Only after the book was in print did I discover that Russian translators have a trick they use to make that sound. I'll share that secret now, in case you can get hold of a copy of the book and read it. You won't need it to decipher any of the messages in code that are part of the story, but you might want to know the trick if your name is Jennifer or Jim and you want to write it in code.
Russians combine two letters to make that sound.
The first is
The second is
You don't understand how дж makes a "j" sound? Well, try making the "d" sound first and then that super-soft "g" - and then keep saying them together, faster and faster. Pretty soon you'll find that you're saying the sound that we write with a "j"!
That's one secret I wish I had known about back when I wrote the book.
I'm sharing it with you now.
If you get a chance to read this story I hope you'll have fun
learning that code.
It's easy.
I love secret codes, myself.
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