Secret Seven Adventure

Secret Seven Adventure is the second of Enid Blyton's Secret Seven books, and it gives 7 year olds a proper hideout, a password and a stolen necklace.

What happens

The society meets in an old shed at the bottom of Peter and Janet's garden. The letters S.S. are painted on the door in green. There are seven ginger biscuits, a jug of lemonade and one big dog biscuit for Scamper, who is not a member but is allowed in anyway.

The password changes every week. This week it is Rabbits.

Honestly, half the pleasure of this book is the admin. Badges pinned on. Password whispered at the door. Jack's sister Susie has pinched his badge and turns up shouting the password just to be annoying, which is very good work from Susie.

The problem is that nothing has happened for four weeks and Barbara says so. What is the point of a secret society with no mystery in it?

So they invent one. They dress up, go out to Little Thicket next to the walls of Milton Manor, and play at stalking each other.

And then a real man drops over the Manor wall and hides in the same bushes.

This is where it turns. Peter crawls up to a gorse bush expecting his friend and finds a stranger's face instead. Colin is up a tree watching it all and cannot call out, because the man climbs the very tree he is sitting in and settles just below him.

Nobody knows Colin is up there. The others give up and go home. He sits and tries not to cough.

For a young reader that stretch is properly tense, and it is all done with children hiding in a field.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The game they invent is dressing as Red Indians, with head-dresses, painted faces and a wooden hatchet, and the book uses that language throughout. There is also a moment where Peter says Susie wants smacking. It is an old book and it reads like one.

Both are easy enough to talk about if you are reading it together. A child reading alone will absorb it without comment, so it is your call.

The rest of it has aged rather better. Children with a shed, a password and no grown-up in sight, working out what a man was doing on the wrong side of a wall.

What to read next

If they take to the Seven, Puzzle for the Secret Seven is in the library too. That one starts with a house going up in flames and a violin going missing.