2018
WISE Score
The true story of the 10,000 women who won WWII with math, secret codes, and a massive amount of coffee.
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If your kid liked Hidden Figures, this is the logical next step. It’s a rare nonfiction book that actually moves like a thriller, focusing on the thousands of college girls recruited to break German and Japanese codes while their brothers were overseas.
It’s smart, it’s fast, and it’s a massive win for building background knowledge about WWII without just focusing on tanks and generals. It’s also a great way to sneak some STEM appreciation into a history lesson.
Perfect for ages 10 to 14. Younger readers might find the historical context a bit dense, but it's a great choice for a read-aloud if they're into mysteries or spy stuff.
Models intelligence, patriotism, and incredible teamwork during a global crisis without being preachy.
While it's nonfiction, the focus on code-breaking and secret-keeping sparks a lot of curiosity about cryptography and puzzles.
Extremely safe for the target age group. Discusses war, but focuses on the intellectual and social side of the home front rather than battlefield gore.
Huge wins for historical literacy and showing women's crucial role in STEM before the term even existed.
Liza Mundy’s original version of Code Girls was a bestseller for a reason: it unearthed a massive piece of American history that had been buried under 'Top Secret' classifications for decades. This Young Readers Edition does a fantastic job of stripping away the denser political maneuvering of the adult version to focus on the human story and the mechanics of the work itself.
What makes this work for kids is the focus on the 'why.' These weren't just people doing math in a vacuum; they were college students and schoolteachers who were suddenly handed the keys to the most sensitive secrets in the world. The book captures the tension of the era—the long hours, the social lives in wartime D.C., and the absolute necessity of their work.
For parents who are worried about their kids' reading stamina, this is a great candidate for an audiobook. As we say at Screenwise, listening is a key strand of the 'Reading Rope.' Hearing the stories of these women can build vocabulary and historical context just as effectively as staring at the page, and it might be the thing that hooks a kid who isn't usually into nonfiction. It’s a solid piece of history that feels surprisingly modern in its themes of female empowerment and the ethics of surveillance.
The grown-up original: This is the official young readers adaptation of Code Girls by Liza Mundy — Liza Mundy's own retelling, at a length and reading level a middle-schooler can finish. When they close this one and want more, the original is the natural next step.
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