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John Verney is obviously writing far more for his own pleasure than for children and this is the way the best children’s books get written.”—Madeline L’Engle, New York Times
Twelve-year-old February Callendar and her older brother Friday are home from boarding school for the summer. For fun, Friday has been digging a tunnel through the backyard. When their father, a war correspondent, leaves to cover an international crisis, the siblings escape their mother and their tutor and get wrapped up in a crisis of their own. They can hardly believe it when their search for clues—including a suspicious plane crash, a mysterious mineral, and a comic strip with secret messages—leads right back to Friday’s tunnel and a chance to save the world during their summer vacation.
“The Callendar family . . . is human and real, full of noise, squabbles and faults . . . it would be unfair to reveal the role the Callendar children play solving a frightening and realistic world crisis . . . John Verney is obviously writing far more for his own pleasure than for children and this is the way the best children’s books get written.”—Madeline L’Engle, New York Times
“[A] marvellous thriller for children.”—A. N. Wilson
"All the qualities of vitality and enjoyment, of laughter and life, of invention and poetry and love, of which we seem starved, are here in full measure."—The Times Literary Supplement
"The whole thing whips itself into a state of enormous excitement and complication, like a whodunnit, but much livelier than most."—The Guardian
"A chaotic romp centered around the Cold War which encompasses family politics, nuclear science, ponies, unscrupulous spies and sibling rivalry. It has a sharp-talking female protagonist, is very funny and highly entertaining."—Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You