The Secret Project Illustrated by Jeanette Winter Simon & Schuster (Beach Lane Books)
Junior Library Guild Selection Bank Street Best Children's Book 2018 (starred) ILA Best Children's Nonfiction 2017 ILA Children's Choice Reading List 2017 NSTA-CBC Best Outstanding Science Trade Book 2018 Southwest Book Award (Border Library Library Association) New Mexico's "Book of the Year" for National Book Festival Booklist Lasting Connections Selection
FIVE STARRED REVIEWS…!
*“Sure to spark conversation about ethics and the use of nuclear weaponry, this powerful book demands a wide readership.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) Read the review
*“An astonishing way to lay the groundwork for such works for older readers as Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb (2012), this is a beautifully told introduction to a difficult subject.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) Read the review
*“A picture book’s powerful potential to reach multiple audiences at varied levels of prior knowledge and understanding is on full display here, and adults tasked with shepherding youth of all ages through the darkest episodes of history will appreciate so moving and versatile a guide.” (Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, starred review and feature article) Read the review
*“While it’s difficult to imagine this resonating with the typical picture-book reader, the quiet—and then abruptly explosive—tone is spot-on, cultivating both curiosity and unease, as if this is a secret we’d rather not know.” (Booklist, starred review) Read the review
*“An author’s note supplies more information about the event and its repercussions, but the text itself, concise and thorough, stands on its own, its dispassionate accounting just the right counterpoint to the contained terror in the art.” (The Horn Book, starred review)
“One of the most beautiful nonfiction picture books on a too little covered moment in American history I’ve ever seen. Chilling, in the best sense of the word.” (School Library Journal blog: A Fuse # 8 Production) Read the reviewRead the review
“[Jonah Winter’s] new book, The Secret Project, looks to find a different way of telling the story of the Manhattan Project: one that strips away the justifications and rationalizations we’ve built around why the bomb had to be built and explain simply how it came to be.” (Kirkus Reviews, feature article, “Interviews & Profiles: Jonah Winter”) Read the review
"All week long we’re celebrating THE SECRET PROJECT, the mysterious and edifying nonfiction picture book about The Manhattan Project." (ALL THE WONDERS' celebration of the book, including a podcast interview with the author, essays about the book, including one by the author) Go to All the Wonders of the Secret Project
"The Japanese edition was translated by 70-year-old Yumiko Sakuma, who commented, 'I hope this book is able to spur readers to think about how terrible things can go on without us even noticing, and to treasure their own thoughts.'" (Japan's national daily newspaper, The Mainichi, August 8th, 2018) Read the article
"The Secret Project introduces the most fearful of subjects to the youngest readers at a time of supreme urgency.... This powerful picture book is one of the two or three greatest of 2017 and demands inclusion in the Caldecott committee’s winners circle." (Wonders in the Dark, "Caldecott Medal Contender: The Secret Project") Read the review
"There’s no doubt: with his signature style, sometimes spare, sometimes exuberant, Winter has a knack for converting challenging subjects into compulsively readable, eye-opening texts for young readers.... Here Winter offers insight into his more recent works, particularly The Secret Project (2017), as well as the ever-changing landscape of kidlit." (Booklist, "Talking With Jonah Winter") Read the interview
