I wrote Top Secret: Uncover Your Inner Spy as the Girl Power companion to my earlier The
Quiz Book for Spies. Even though that book is not gender specific,it is indeed aimed at
ALL kids, it somehow kept getting shuffled off to the "boy" book
shelves.
So my fabulous editor at Scholastic Canada, Tamara Sztainbok, and I put our heads together and came up with Top Secret, a very feminist version of that gender-neutral book. It's got all the humor and verve that we put into Spies. So what's different? Top Secret has 100% female spy references and trivia. For example, you'll learn about real life historic spies who were women, and why most espionage agencies think gals make the best spies in the world. Goodbye, James Bond. Hello, Kim Possible.
My goal with
this book is to take back the power of pink - as it is with the other
girl-oriented titles in my popular quiz book series. They all celebrate what girls really are - smart, capable,
funny - without suggesting for one red second that our interests or
abilities fit into a corner (and that corner is filled only with makeup and cookery
aids). 
Like many of my colleagues and friends, I deplore the pink-and-blue aisle thinking of our contemporary marketplace. We're all working to change it. But in the meantime, we can also use it - to deliver to girls the kind of material that makes them proud to be girls. To celebrate the accomplishments of incredible women like Barbara Lauer, Nancy Wake and Virginia Hall (If you don't know who they were, you'll have to read the book!). To give girls opportunities to use their smarts to solve logic puzzles and break codes. And to develop girls' belief in themselves, and their ability to become whoever they want, even if what they want to be is (shhhh!) totally top secret.
