Read The Secrets of Droon 1 – The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Tony Abbott's The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet is a fantasy adventure for 7 year olds that starts with three friends and a very messy basement.
Eric has been told to clear out the basement. His best friend Neal offers to help, then flops into an old chair and announces he'll be the coach. Julie turns up with a football. Neal kicks it, it bounces off the tool bench and smacks him on the nose (serves him right, says Julie).
The ball rolls into a little closet under the stairs. Close the door, switch off the light, and a rainbow staircase appears where the floor should be. It leads down into a world called Droon.
Droon is brilliant. There are flying lizards called groggles, ridden by red warriors called Ninns. There's a wizard called Galen who's more than five hundred years old, and a spider troll called Max with bright orange hair. And there's Princess Keeah, who's being hunted by the wicked Lord Sparr (he has purple fins behind his ears that go darker when he's cross!).
Before long the three friends are on a rescue mission. It's fast and funny, with lots of sound effects on the page. Thwang! Zamm! Kla-blam! Neal grumbles the whole way, Julie refuses to believe in magic even while it's happening, and Eric is the one who feels they simply HAVE to go down those stairs.
Who hasn't wished for a secret door in their own house? That's the magic of this one. It all begins somewhere completely ordinary, with a chore nobody wants to do.
The danger is all adventure-story danger. Flaming arrows whizz past and the friends get locked up in a tower. Keeah's mother fought Sparr long ago and was never seen again, which is mentioned briefly as part of Keeah's story.
It's a great pick for a reader moving on to longer chapter books who wants a proper quest. It's easy to follow who's who. And there's a clever little twist when they get home that makes you want to go straight back down.
If they're desperate to get back to Droon, Journey to the Volcano Palace starts with Eric falling out of bed after a very strange dream about Lord Sparr.
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