The Secret Code Menace (Cold Fusion)

A thoughtful and provocative fiction story about the science of secret codes and error correction. Sara, Daniel and Jared have devised their own simple code to communicate with each other in class at school. But when a written, coded message is amended en-route to Sara and she gets into trouble, they start to explore how they could protect their code from tampering by somebody. This all remains a private hobby, until one day, on a school trip to a bank, the class is caught up in an attempted bank robbery. Suddenly Sara, Daniel and Jared's playing with codes - and with methods of error correction - has an urgent reality. With a story that is both intriguing and puzzling, this book is perfect for children who want to read something out of the ordinary, something different to the usual range of books on offer for their age group. As part of our Cold Fusion series, it is a relatively short read, but still has a compelling plot and offers plenty for the reader to think about, so it's perfect for more able reluctant readers.

Pamela Cosman is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. With a particular interest in streaming high quality videos and multi-media content, Pamela brings her academic background into her writing.