The Forgotten Five 3 – Rebel Undercover

Lisa McMann's Rebel Undercover is the third Forgotten Five adventure for 9 year olds, and it opens with the team one friend short.

What happens

Cabot has walked away from the others to live with her parents. The trouble is, her parents are criminals. They're working for President Fuerte, and they wear tracking bands round their ankles so he always knows where they are.

Her dad can read minds, so Cabot has to keep a wall up inside her own head. That's a lonely way to live with your family. She's been getting terrible headaches too. Then one day she looks in the mirror and her eyes are glowing green. Has her power finally turned up?

Back at the monastery cottage, the others miss her badly. Brix, who's ten and has spent every single day of his life with Cabot, sobs into his tiny pig. When The Librarian says Cabot should be treated as an enemy, the whole table explodes.

Meanwhile the city is in uproar. A video has shown everyone that President Fuerte is secretly supernatural himself, after years of teaching people to hate anyone like him. And Seven's mum, who can project an image of herself anywhere she likes, is running for president against him.

It's a busy book with a big cast, and it hops between them. One chapter you're with Cabot snooping round her parents' office. The next you're in the president's office while protesters claw at the windows. The powers are good fun (Seven can only disappear completely if he leaves all his clothes behind, which he's still getting used to).

Underneath the action it's about parents who let you down and friends who stick by you anyway. Can you love someone and still not trust them? Cabot is working that out as she goes.

This isn't the place to start. It carries straight on from The Invisible Spy, so that's the one to read first if you can.

What to read next

If your reader loves a gang of kids on a secret mission, try City Spies. Sara is twelve, fed up with the foster system and facing juvenile detention, until a British spy called Mother turns up with a very different offer.