Hardy Boys Secret Files 04 – Hopping Mad

Franklin W Dixon's Hopping Mad is a Hardy Boys Secret Files mystery for 7 year olds about a school talent show where it suddenly starts raining frogs.

What happens

Frank and Joe have been practising the big sword fight from their favourite film, The Princess Bride, for weeks. (They've each seen it seventeen times.) When Mum takes away the curtain rods they've been using as swords, Aunt Gertrude saves the day with two cardboard tubes from the attic.

The opening is brilliant, by the way. You're right there on a cliff above a roaring ocean with them, until Mum leans out of the kitchen window!

The talent show itself is great fun. The class clown gets pulled off stage for his jokes (a bit rude, but only a bit). Their friend Cissy juggles FOUR baseballs. Then Melissa and Todd, who've won the last two shows, start their big song and a frog lands right on Melissa's face.

Then another one falls. And another!

The head teacher gives whoever did it two hours to own up, or the whole show is cancelled. So Frank pulls out his battered notebook and the boys start on the six Ws they learned from their dad, who's a private investigator.

What's lovely is how fair they are. Frank points out that Melissa and Todd can be annoying but they're also really good, and sweet when they're not busy trying to win. Nobody gets written off just because they're a bit much. Would your reader have thought the frogs were part of the act, like half the audience did?

It's a quick, cheerful read with plenty of dialogue and a real puzzle to follow along with. And the ending is very sweet (no spoilers!).

What to read next

Hopping Mad is the fourth of the Secret Files cases. If you'd like to go back to the beginning, try Trouble at the Arcade, where Frank is practising hard at Alien Blob Blaster for a video game tournament at the arcade's grand reopening.