Secrets and conspiracies have long interested me. I especially remember enjoying as a child a conspiratorial children's book called The Secret Three.1 Ostensibly the story of three boys who form a secret club, the book's banal description of the boys' adventures was overshadowed by the intrigue through which the boys meet. Two of them, Mark and Billy, learn of Tom's arrival on the island where they all live by finding an encrypted message that Tom had placed inside a bottle and tossed out to sea. Mark and Billy decode the message, meet Tom, and continue to develop new secrets and codes. Wherever you turn, the book implied, you might find a possible sign of some secret, decipherable existence that promised the fulfillment of a deep, perhaps unrecognized desire. Ironically, the book itself was advertised as part of its publisher Harper & Row's I Can Read series; while clearly an allusion to its simple language, large typeface, and pictures representing the action contained in the written story, the series name took on a second meaning for a book that noted the proliferation of secret signs scattered about the world. Within this book, learning to read was a process not only of understanding the plain meaning of writing, but also of discerning the existence and correct interpretation of secret writings and messages.