The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
Fourteen-year-old Lizzie is supposed to be on her way to America from England. It’s 1940, World War II is raging on. Her father died long ago, her mother went missing, her brother is off at school.
Her nineteen-year-old brother, Jakob, hasn’t answered any of Lizzie’s letters. This concerns Lizzie so much that she escapes her chaperone and leaves the ship bound for America to find him. After showing up at the place where she has been mailing her letters, Lizzie waits for her brother. Jakob does come to get her, but he is not happy about it. Because she has missed her ship, and she has shown up at the address, she is quickly brought to Bletchley. Here she is asked to sign a form agreeing to keep quiet about what is going on there. I thought it was funny that Lizzie is thinking to herself that she is the worst at keeping quiet about things, even though she really wants to know about everything at the same time. So, she signs the paper. I get it. She also blames most of her quirks on being half American. I don’t know why, but I found that sort of funny.
Bletchley is where all the codebreakers are being housed. Jakob has been recruited, and he spends his nights (midnight to 8am) looking over German messages, trying to break the ciphers. He is working alongside Alan Turing! As Jakob works on the Enigma machine, he explains it. Yeah, I didn’t really understand much of that stuff. But it was interesting to hear about all the work that went into spying on the Germans.
Lizzie is concerned about where her mother might be. Jakob believes that she has been killed. She had been in Poland when she went missing. While Jakob works on the Enigma, Lizzie works on finding her mother. Well, technically, Lizzie is supposed to be running messages all over Bletchley, but she is also learning as much as she can about the place and looking for clues to where her mother might be. Oh, she is also avoiding her Gran, who wants her to come to America. She is a busy girl!
I really enjoyed hearing about Bletchley and the codebreakers. I was also very invested in Lizzie’s escapades. She really was a hoot! This book was a little longer than most books I get for the middle school library, but I was invested the entire time. There were several side characters you learn about throughout the book. Lizzie makes all sorts of friends wherever she goes (because she is half American), and her new friends are there to help her out! They developed some excellent plans in this book!
This might be a little bit of a spoiler, but not really a massive part of the plot, so it’s not that big of a deal. There is a part of the book where Alan Turing hides some silver by burying it in the woods. In the historical notes, it is said that Turing actually did bury silver to protect it from the Germans. By the time he came back for it, he couldn’t find it! I don’t think it has ever been found! The book took some liberties with what could have happened, and I thought it was amusing.
Four out of Five Magical Coffee Cups
Literary Coffee 