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ARE YOU A GIFTED CHILD LOOKING FOR SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES?

When a peculiar advertisement appears in the newspaper for children to take part in a secret mission, children everywhere sit a series of mysterious tests. In the end, just four children succeed: Reynie, Kate, Sticky and Constance. They have three things in common: they are all honest, all remarkably talented and all orphans.

They must go undercover at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened where the only rule is that there are no rules. There they must work as a team to save not only themselves, but also the world outside the walls.

The New York Times bestseller comes to the UK.

He found himself in a brightly lit room with pitch black walls. The front door, which Rhonda had just closed behind him, had no knob on the inside and was likewise painted black, so that it blended into the wall. The room was rather cramped, perhaps six feet wide and six long (Kate would know for sure, he thought), and was entirely empty. Not counting the nearly invisible front door behind him, it had three exits:  to the left, to the right, and immediately before him. These doorways had no doors in them, and the rooms beyond were unlit, so that Reynie couldn’t see into them.

“Are we expected to walk into dark rooms?” he wondered. “This is going to make Sticky extremely unhappy.” 

But he was only thinking of Sticky to take his mind off himself, for the prospect of groping about in the darkness intimidated him more than he cared to admit. “Well,” he said aloud, to bolster his courage, “there’s no time to waste, so here goes.” 

He plunged through the doorway ahead of him (this ought to be the most direct path to the rear of the house) and, as if by magic, seemed to walk into the very room he had just left. It was cramped, brightly lit, painted black, and he could see a dark doorway in each wall.

“What in the world?” he said, turning to look behind him, then in confusion turning round again. At once he realized his mistake. If he hadn’t turned around, he might have kept his bearings, but now he’d lost them.  He was in a maze of identical rooms. Everything looked exactly the same in every direction.  His confidence was quickly draining away.

“Now, think,” he told himself. “When you enter a room, its light must turn on automatically, and when you leave, it goes off. But there are light switches by each door. Perhaps if you throw a switch, the light stays on. It might be as simple as that.” 

With a quick inspection of the nearest doorway, however, this hope vanished.  What Reynie had supposed were light switches were only decorative wooden panels. He was about to turn away and try to retrace his steps when it occurred to him the panels themselves might be important. He took a closer look at one. 

About the size of a playing card, the panel had four arrows etched into it, pointing in different directions and painted different colours. A blue arrow pointed to the right, a green one to the left, a wiggly-shaped yellow one straight ahead, and a purple one down. 

Of course, Reynie thought, feeling foolish. The arrows weren’t for decoration—they were meant to show the way. But which was he to believe?  After going round to every panel he was no better off. Four doorways with four arrows each meant sixteen arrows to choose from, and there was no apparent pattern.

Reynie racked his brain: should he follow the green ones? Green arrows on a traffic signal mean “Go.” But perhaps that was too obvious. Perhaps the red arrows were the ones to follow—perhaps that was the trick. Yet that hardly seemed fair. What if he’d been colour-blind and couldn’t even tell the difference?

No sooner had this occurred to him than he knew the secret.