Friday's Tunnel

February Callendar comes from a large strange family: her father, Augustus Callendar, is a renowned newspaperman, one-time MP and briefly the Governor of a small Meditteranean island; her mother January is an artist but lately has been exhausted by her work raising six children on a small farm - and she’s pregnant again; and older brother Friday is mad about tunnels and not much else. When Gus takes off to his former island to prevent either a mass rebellion or World War III, and then disappears, it is up to February and Friday to sort through the clues (including those in a comic strip, the storyline of which bears an eerie resemblance to real life) and save the world from destruction by a new element that could blow up the earth…. show more This is a very strange book, published in 1959 and describing a very different world to now. There’s some racism here as might be expected in an English book of the time, and a thread of “Britain’s ‘right’ to rule the world” (although this is largely scoffed at), along with lots of adventures and squabbling between siblings. It was marketed, apparently, as a children’s book (not YA, I mean kids around 9 - 12) but is much more grown-up than most in that category. Oh, and it’s illustrated by the author, just for fun. Not sure I’d recommend it, but it certainly was an odd experience to read it some 67 years later! show less

Friday Callendar enjoys digging. He creates a tunnel deep into a hill on his family's property. An organization of foreign spies uses the tunnel to hide a dangerous element. Friday and his sister, February, stumble into this secret plot. There are many twists and turns in the story and you really don't know what's happening until the end.

Somehow the eccentric Callendar family manages to get involved in a world crisis in their own backyard - which is a great deal of fun for everyone involved, including the reader.

Quite an adventure, very grown up for a kids book, surprising ending.