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 John Verney (1913-1993) was born in London and educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. A newlywed at the outbreak of war in 1939, he joined the North Somerset Yeomanry and subsequently served in the Royal Armoured Corps and the fledgling Special Air Service. He fought in Syria, Egypt, Sardinia, and Italy, where he escaped a POW camp. Verney's books include Verney Abroad (1954), Going to the Wars (1955), Friday’s Tunnel (1959), Look at Houses (1959), February’s Road (1961), Every Advantage (1961), The Mad King of Chichiboo (1963), ismo (1964), A Dinner of Herbs (1961), Fine Day for a Picnic (1968), Seven Sunflowers Seeds (1968), and Samson’s Hoard (1973). “My name is February Callendar, and so many exciting things have happened recently that I have decided to put them down in a book. "My father says that nowadays any schoolgirl of thirteen who writes a book is hailed as a genius. Well, I’m a schoolgirl and I’m nearly thirteen and though I don’t think I am quite a genius, I certainly wouldn’t mind being hailed as one. The trouble before was that I had nothing really exciting to write a book about―just school, and my brother Friday (who is a year older) and my younger sisters and my pony Gorse and my guinea-pigs. But of course those are what all the other geniuses of my age write about and I wanted mine to be a proper adventure story. And I might add that I intend it to be the sort of book I like to read, which means one with a map and drawings, and talk on every page and not one with long descriptions about the sun’s early rays touching the feathery beech-tips with gold and gossamer quivering in the dew.” Whenever a brother and sister have adventures it usually seems to be the sister who tells about them afterwards. In our case this is partly because Friday goes back to school next week whereas I shall be stuck in bed for ages with a broken nose, a broken pelvis, and a broken several other things. But it’s also because he’s more interested in digging tunnels and building tree-houses than in writing which he does very slowly, if beautifully, in Italic. His school letters are always terribly legible but as he can never think of anything to say they only last half a page, and any goof can write legibly when he has nothing to say. I write a speedy scrawl and my school letters go on forever. But then no one can decipher them afterwards, which is what my father would call typical of life. According to him anything is typical of life when it’s contradictory or puzzling or just plain unfair, like being given a box of chocolates for yourself and then being made to hand them round politely so that others can pick the best ones first. My bed has been pulled under the window. The view outside is divided in half by our huge elm. To the left of the elm I look down on to a corner of the walled kitchen garden where my mother hangs the washing. She’s hanging it there now; and Mr. Toop, who’s our gardener and works the water pump for the well, is weeding the asparagus bed. Beyond that there’s the paddock, with Gorse and the new grey Arab, also a Shetland pony called Clover and a Jersey cow called Jane. And this minute my four younger sisters a