The "dean's list" of the title is a secret notebook Leland takes with him to every meeting, headed "CTIWBIDU" ("Committee Thoughts It Would Be Indiscreet of a Dean to Utter").

In a secret notebook, the 15-year-old girl wrote of the mischievous 12-year-old: 'I must love James more.'

"They can have adventures with their secret notebooks or can spy on their little brothers who are trying to sneak into their rooms," Ms. Swanson said.

During the 19305, Dr. Linebarger began keeping a secret notebook -part personal diary, part story ideas.

His universe had been forming in his mind at least since the time he wrote his first published story in 1928, and it took further shape in his secret notebook during the 19305 and 19405.

No one will tell Momik exactly what happened "Over There" in Europe, and Momik, who writes down all his observations in a secret notebook, vows to free his parents somehow from their fears.

His twelve-year-old sister Josephine, on the other hand, is ugly, odd, precociously intelligent, and so obsessed with detective stories that she spies continually on the rest of the household, writing down her observations in a secret notebook.

As proof, de Haviland has enclosed the child's secret notebook, the first line of which reads "To-day I killed grandfather".

Cumbered in her body, dressed in black, hunched over her secret notebook with window blinds shut against the happy careless people outside, she makes small scratching sounds with her pen, covering with nightfall all creatures that really should know what to expect by now, but don't.

He has to be blackmailed into going by Jimmy, who wins him over by giving him a peek at his secret notebook, where he defeats his anxieties by proxy through the exploits of comic strip superheroes.