Guest Post - Sarah Baker - Eloise Undercover - UK Blog (5) Tour - MORSE CODE (Catnip)

ELOISE UNDERCOVER

France, 1944. 12-year-old Eloise’s father has not come home in over a week, and she is getting worried that something might be badly wrong. When the Germans occupy Eloise’s town, and the Nazi Kommandant moves into Maison de la Noyer, things start falling apart. Through a chance meeting, Eloise volunteers to join the Resistance. Suspense, secrecy and danger follow her as, inspired by her favourite detective fiction books, she tries to find her father. A hidden passage behind a tapestry, a deportation list and a race against time... Will Eloise find her father? And what other secrets will she reveal?

Read an extract from the book.

Published by Catnip Paperback, £6.99, 9 + year olds, ISBN: 9781910611135- OUT NOW.

--- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . 

Do you know that this says? 

It says Morse Code! 

(Pinterest photo credit) 


Morse Code is a series of dots and dashes used to send individual letters of the alphabet. If you use it over a short wave radio the long and short tones are referred to as dits and dahs. You could also use a torch!

(link to photo credit): http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/code/ei/w2-ei.html 


Morse code was used during WW2 because it was the simplest, most recognizable and understandable signal to send. Online encoding didn’t exist yet, so the safest way of making sure your message was secure was to encrypt it yourself, then send it. Someone at the other end would write down your message, feed it through the same manual decoding system in reverse and… voila! 


Could you be a covert code breaker? 


Here’s an example of a substitution cipher. Each letter of the alphabet has been substituted with a code letter. 

HINT: Sometimes it helps to work on the short words first (notice how NBY is repeated several times!) 


Here’s a question for you written in code. Can you crack it? 
QBUN QUM NBY ZCLMN MUNYFFCNY NI ILVCN NBY YULNB? 


Here’s the alphabet to help you. 
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 

Got it? If so, congrats, you’re on your way to becoming a spy! If not, here’s the key: 


Question: 
QBUN QUM NBY ZCLMN MUNYFFCNY NI ILVCN NBY YULNB? 

Key: 
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 
GHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEF 

You can use random orders and patterns, but in this case the alphabet has simply shifted 6 places to the right. 


Question: 
QBUN QUM NBY ZCLMN MUNYFFCNY NI ILVCN 
WHAT WAS THE FIRST SATELLITE TO ORBIT 
NBY YULNB? 
THE EARTH? 

Answer: 
Sputnik 1 


If this was far too easy, try a harder cipher HERE or you can find out how much more you need to learn about being a spy by booking one of my school workshops HERE 



Big thanks to Education.com for the Code Breaker resources.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sarah Baker is a children’s writer based in London. Her previous book, Through the Mirror Door, has been very well received by bloggers, bookshops, and readers. Sarah has worked extensively in film, with roles at Aardman Features, the Bermuda Film Festival and as Story Editor at Celador Films. She writes guest features for a number of online magazines and blogs, including the popular #vintage baker finds pieces for Bristol Vintage. ELOISE UNDERCOVER is Sarah’s second novel.

Find out more at bysarahbaker.com<http://bysarahbaker.com/>  and follow Sarah on Instagram and twitter @bysarahbaker

BOOK COVER ALERT - Sarah Baker - Eloise Undercover (Catnip Publishing)

On the 7th September 2017, Catnip will publish the second book by Sarah Baker. Here is a quick peek at the fantastic book-cover art work that has been exclusively revealed today across the social media network.

For any of you who are interested, this time last year I featured a BRILLANT post on the concept design of the first book "Through the Mirror Door". This SHOWED a fascinating insight into the final book-cover that we get to see and love - why not check it out here. 

Eloise is another example of Baker’s strong and memorable female characters. She yet again demonstrates how girls can take the lead as well as examining the very contemporary topics of war, loss and fear. This beautifully written story will be enjoyed by fans of detective fiction and authors Katherine Rundell, Emma Carroll and Robin Stevens.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
Sarah Baker is a children’s writer based in London. Her previous book, Through the Mirror Door, has been very well received by bloggers, bookshops and readers. Sarah has worked extensively in film, with roles at Aardman Features, the Bermuda Film Festival and as Story Editor at Celador Films. She writes guest features for a number of online magazines and blogs, including the popular #vintage baker finds pieces for Bristol Vintage. ELOISE UNDERCOVER is Sarah’s second novel.

Find out more at bysarahbaker.com  and follow Sarah on Instagram and twitter @bysarahbaker 

Sarah Baker - Through the Mirror Door Book Cover - Concept Designed by Will Steele and Illustrated by Jessica Courtney-Tickle

This is one of my favourite book covers this year. It is from "Through the Mirror Door" which has been illustrated by the talented Jessica Courtney-Tickle. I recently read this book and really loved it; (review here) it got me thinking about having the right book cover image that reflects the story inside. The overall book cover is very important as it needs to attract potential buyers and make them pick up the book. It needs to appeal to as many readers as possible. This one encapsulates the story really well, in my opinion, and gives an air of mystery about the plot; gently tickling the brain into thinking about what is behind the cover. 

The above image and the two below are progress shots which were produced by the illustrator. 

This is the second progress illustration which shows a close up of the house from the first illustration. This is similar perspective to the final book cover.

This is a stripped back version of the above illustration. It is missing the character and a lot of the foreground detail. This allows the illustrator and Will Steele to begin to think about the positioning of the title and the layout of the final cover.

The above image shows a different colour palette in order to investigate which colours will work best for the final cover.

In the image above you will see the perspective has somewhat changed and the colour palette has transformed yet again fantastically. The tweaks and changes that have been applied might possibly be due to the partnership of Will Steele and the illustrator playing around with the concept of the image. It works really well for me as it is crisper, clearer and more focused and the colour palette works really well on this. 

This image shows a swirling calligraphic font which was probably disregarded as this was not used in the final selection.

This is the final version of the book cover. I hope that you agree with me that this is a fantastic final production. A lot of thought has obviously gone into the process of such an amazing cover and, in my opinion, it has definitely been worth it. 

If you love the illustrations as much as I do please check out other work by Jessica on her website here: http://jessica-tickle.squarespace.com

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