You can learn more about the ENIAC Six by visiting documentarian Kathy Kleiman’s engaging and informative ENIAC Programmers Project at http://eniacprogrammers.org. And read Kay’s own words about the ENIAC and how much she loved math at a website created by her family at https://sites.google.com/a/opgate.com/eniac/Home/kay-mcnulty-mauchly-antonelli.
The Spy Ring
The most extensive spy ring ever to infiltrate the United States was led by Fritz Duquesne (pronounced “du-KANE”), a Nazi intelligence officer who was living and working in the United States just before the start of WWII. His nickname was “the Duke.”
With thirty-three members, according to the FBI, the spy ring’s goal was to steal military secrets as well as sabotage American factories and infrastructure. The spies, men and a few women, took jobs working for airlines, shipping companies, and defense factories, and more ordinary roles in restaurants.
They blended in to everyday society, but while they thought they were making inroads, the spies were under constant film surveillance from a hidden camera in a young German colleague’s office. The colleague’s name was Harry Sawyer, and he hated the Nazis. Harry had volunteered to work as a double agent, helping the FBI shut down the Duke and other members of the spy ring. Harry’s real name was William “Bill” Sebold, and he’s considered the first American hero of WWII.
For this story, I moved Harry, the Duke, and his spy ring from New York to Philadelphia. But you can learn more of the facts about the real-life case in the FBI’s archives at https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/duquesne-spy-ring. Or watch FBI archival footage of the Duquesne spy ring and other wartime military propaganda online at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1003974.
Radio News Reports
You can listen to President Roosevelt’s radio address to Congress and the nation the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, in what has come to be known as the “Date of Infamy” speech, at https://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/roosevelts-day-infamy-speech/.
Or listen to other WWII radio news reports to get a sense of what Americans back home learned of the war’s progress at websites such as the World War II Foundation at www.wwiifoundation.org/students/real-time-radio-broadcasts-from-d-day-june-6-1944/.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Books
Bartik, Jean Jennings. Pioneer Programmer: Jean Jennings Bartik and the Computer that Changed the World. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2013.
Benton, Mike. Superhero Comics of the Golden Age: The Illustrated History. Dallas, TX: Taylor, 1992.
Cahan, Richard, and Michael Williams. Un-American: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II. Chicago: CityFiles Press, 2016.
Coogan, Peter. Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre. Austin, TX: MonkeyBrain Books, 2006.
Duffy, Peter. Double Agent: The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring. New York: Scribner, 2014.
King, Bart, and Greg Paprocki. The Big Book of Superheroes. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2014.
Lepore, Jill. The Secret History of Wonder Woman. New York: Knopf, 2014.
Lindop, Edmund, wiht Margaret J. Goldstein. America in the 1940s. Minneapolis, MN. Twenty-First Century Books, 2009.
Madrid, Mike. Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics. Ashland, OR: Exterminating Angel Press, 2013.
Madrid, Mike. The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines. Ashland, OR: Exterminating Angel Press, 2009.
Maslon, Laurence, and Michael Kantor. Superheroes! Capes, Cowls, and the Creation of Comic Book Culture. New York: Crown Archetype, 2013.
Robbins, Trina. The Great Women Cartoonists. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2001.
Robbins, Trina. The Great Women Superheroes. Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1996.
Robbins, Trina. Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists 1896–2013. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2013.
Documentaries
The Computers: The Remarkable Story of the ENIAC Programmers. Directed by Kathy Kleiman, Kate McMahon, and Jon Palfreman. ENIAC Programmers Project: eniacprogrammers.org, 2016.
Top Secret Rosies: The Female “Computers” of WWII. Directed by LeAnn Erickson. Written by Cynthia Baughman. PBS, 2010.
Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines. Directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan. Performed by Lynda Carter, Lindsay Wagner. Produced by Kelcey Edwards, 2012.
Websites
“Duquesne Spy Ring.” FBI. Accessed May 18, 2016. https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/duquesne-spy-ring.
“The Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli Story.” Google Sites. https://sitesgoogle.com/a/opgate.com/eniac/Home/kay-mcnulty-mauchly-antonelli.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
KAY MCNULTY, JEAN JENNINGS, AND THE other ENIAC programmers featured in Cape were exciting figures, and I am thankful to have corresponded with their children. Eva Mauchly, Bill Mauchly, and Gini Mauchly Calcerano were spectacular storytellers who generously shared details about their mother, Kay—from her height and eye color to the way she told jokes, how she couldn’t really sing, and that she devoted a good part of her life to the Girl Scouts. I’m also grateful to Jean’s children—Tim Bartik, Jane Bartik, and Mary Williams—who generously shared details with me about their amazing mother, including her “fire-engine-red hair.”
Thanks also to fellow authors and helpful early readers Franny Billingsley and Dana Alison Levy; to comic book gurus Sam Hopkins and James Nurss of First Aid Comics in Chicago; to my local public library’s children’s librarian and reading superhero Tina Carter; to documentarian Kathy Kleiman; to the ever-patient and always-positive Jennifer Mattson and Naoum Issa; and to my brother-in-law Philip Issa for his help on superhero world-building, as well as for asking the exact right questions.
I am grateful to the legendary Trina Robbins, who has been writing and drawing comics and graphic novels for more than forty years, for sitting down with me to talk about early superheroes and the best superpowers. And I thank my sister-in-law Suzy Nakamura, who shared her mother’s experience coming of age in a Japanese internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho, and her father’s in Manzanar, California. Thanks also to Takayo Fischer, who generously talked to me about her own experiences as a young girl in internment camps in Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KATE HANNIGAN writes fiction and nonfiction for young readers, and she especially loves digging up remarkable people from history and sharing their stories. Her superpower seems to be parallel parking, but if she could choose, it would be teleportation. She lives in Chicago with her husband, three kids, and an anxious Australian shepherd. Learn more about WWII superheroes at KateHannigan.com.
Aladdin
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Coming soon in
THE LEAGUE OF SECRET HEROES:
Mask
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ALADDIN
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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First Aladdin hardcover edition August 2019
Text copyright © 2019 by Kate Hannigan
Jacket illustration copyright © 2019 by Kelsey Eng
Interior illustrations copyright © 2019 by Patrick Spaziante
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Jacket designed by Laura Lyn DiSiena and Sammy Yuen Jr.
Interior designed by Laura Lyn DiSiena
The illustrations for this book were rendered digitally.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hannigan, Kate, author. | Spaziante, Patrick, illustrator.
Title: Cape / by Kate Hannigan ; illustrated by Patrick Spaziante.
Description: First Aladdin hardcover edition. | New York : Aladdin, 2019. |
Series: The League of Secret Heroes ; [1] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: Soon after being recruited by the mysterious Mrs. Boudica to join a secret military intelligence operation, Josie, Mae, and Akiko discover their superhero abilites and use them to thwart a Nazi plot to steal the ENIAC computer.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018037398 (print) | LCCN 2018043918 (eBook) | ISBN 9781534439139 (eBook) | ISBN 9781534439115 (hc)
Subjects: | CYAC: Superheroes—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | Spies—Fiction. | Computers—Fiction. | World War, 1939–1945—United States—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.H198158 (eBook) | LCC PZ7.H198158 Cap 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037398
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