FLOSS AND THE BANDITS

A brisk, atmospheric adventure for roughly eight-to-twelve-year-olds that smuggles in a real idea: history belongs to whoever keeps the receipts. The treasure isn't gold but a written account that redeems an outlaw, and the villains want land, not truth. Perfect for kids who like secret tunnels, talking-free animals, and grown-ups who turn out to be the problem. Read it aloud with biscuits.

1. 1

   Act 1

   The Girl with Warning-Flag Hair

   A drizzly Tuesday in late September, and Floss stands outside a ramshackle cottage in Little Dithering, clutching a small suitcase. Her parents have gone abroad to 'sort things out', and she feels utterly abandoned. Aunt Mabel, a large, booming woman in a paint-spattered smock, fixes that with a crushing hug: 'You're a sight for sore eyes, my duck. Now, let's get you inside before the damp gets into your bones.' The cottage has no telly, no telephone, and plumbing with a mind of its own, but Mabel has her philosophy ready: 'We've got books, and we've got biscuits, and that's all a body truly needs.' Floss's new bedroom is a tiny attic room under a sloping ceiling, with a patchwork quilt and a window looking straight onto an overgrown garden and the dark edge of Dithering Wood. On her first walk through the village she passes the shop, the post office and the green with its ancient oak, while everyone stares and whispers behind their hands. Mrs. Grudge, the postmistress, leans over her counter with a warning: 'Mind you stay out of the wood. That's no place for a child, especially not one with hair the colour of a warning flag.' That night Mabel tells the legend: two hundred years ago the Dithering Bandits terrorized the area, led by the never-caught Black Bart, whose treasure lies buried in the wood. The old rhyme says: 'When the moon is high and the owl takes flight, Black Bart's gold gleams in the dead of night. But seek it not, for the wood keeps its own, and those who enter may walk out alone.'

2. 2

   Act 2

   Button, Map, Key

   Next morning, exploring the garden, Floss spots something wedged between the roots of an old apple tree: a small, tarnished silver button engraved with a crude galloping horse. Aunt Mabel turns it over and nearly drops it. 'Well, I'll be. That's a highwayman's button, that is. From a riding coat. My granddad found one just like it when he was a boy, right before he found the first map.' The first map still exists. From a locked desk drawer Mabel pulls a brittle, yellowed parchment: a hand-drawn map of Dithering Wood with an X in faded ink and 'Bart's Hollow' scrawled in a corner, in the family for generations. Floss traces it with her finger and notices something Mabel never paid any mind to: a tiny drawing of a badger near the X. Early on a misty Saturday in October, Floss defies Mrs. Grudge and slips into the wood alone, armed with the map, a compass and a packet of ginger biscuits, the air thick with wet earth and decaying leaves. Deep among the trees she hears a rhythmic tapping, like a hammer on stone, which stops dead the moment she calls out. Following the map, she finds a large, active badger sett at the base of an ancient oak, exactly where the little badger was drawn, and in the churned earth at its entrance a gleam of metal: a rusted iron key with a bow shaped like a twisted, thorny branch. 'This is it. This is really it,' she whispers.

3. 3

   Act 3

   The Boy in the Wood

   A boy steps out from behind a tree: sharp eyes, dirt-smudged cheeks, about her own age. 'You found it, then. I've been watching you. Name's Tom. I live in the wood. Sort of.' He brings the first bad news: 'You're not the only one looking. There's others. Grown-ups. Nasty ones. They've been digging all over, but they don't have the map, and they don't have the key.' That evening Floss sees the proof from her attic window: two men in dark coats emerge from the wood and speak in low, urgent tones to Mrs. Grudge outside the post office, one gesturing angrily towards Aunt Mabel's cottage. At dawn she and Tom return to the wood together. The key fits a hidden, stone-lined door set into a mossy bank near the badger sett, and behind it a dark, narrow tunnel breathes cold stone and old secrets. Tom lights a stub of candle and tells her what his father told him before he disappeared: 'Said Black Bart wasn't just a bandit. He was a rebel. Stole from the tax collectors and gave it back to the village. The treasure's not just gold. It's proof.' The tunnel opens into a small, circular chamber where a heavy oak chest sits on a stone plinth, its lid carved with the same galloping horse as Floss's button. Beside it lies a leather-bound journal with 'B.B.' tooled in gold. Floss opens it and reads the first line aloud: 'I, Bartholomew Blackwood, known as Black Bart, do set down here the true account of my deeds, that the village of Little Dithering may one day know the truth.'

4. 4

   Act 4

   Darkness, Then Daylight

   The two men from the village burst into the chamber, and the truth about them comes out: property developers, working with Mrs. Grudge to buy up the wood and erase its history. The larger one snarls at Floss: 'Hand over that journal, girl, or you'll be staying down here permanent.' Tom answers the way he knows best. He douses the candle, plunging the chamber into darkness, and pulls Floss through a second, narrower tunnel he knows from his father's stories. They come up into daylight at the base of the village oak just as Aunt Mabel arrives with the local constable, alerted by Tom's dog, Scrap. The developers are caught in the open, the journal is safe, and the wood's true history now has witnesses. Floss, who arrived feeling abandoned, ends the story with an aunt, a friend, a dog, and proof that the village's most feared man was its greatest benefactor.

• FFlossA young girl with a mop of curly red hair, dropped on her aunt while her parents 'sort things out' abroad. She wants somewhere to belong, and finds it by defying a warning, digging up a key, and carrying Black Bart's journal into the light.
• AAunt MabelA large, booming painter in a paint-spattered smock who believes books and biscuits are all a body needs. Keeper of the family map, she turns from eccentric guardian to rescuer, arriving with the constable at the crucial moment.
• TTomA wood-dwelling boy with sharp eyes and dirt-smudged cheeks, whose father disappeared but left him stories and a second tunnel. He wants the wood's truth told, and saves Floss by killing the light.
• MMrs. GrudgeThe postmistress who warns children off the wood while secretly helping developers buy it up. Her warning was never protection; it was a fence around a secret.
• BBlack Bart / Bartholomew BlackwoodThe legendary bandit of Dithering Wood, dead two centuries but present through button, chest and journal. His written account recasts him from thief to rebel who returned stolen tax money to the village.

The silver button

The key

The badger

The journal

The candle

The ending is a rescue staged as a magic trick: darkness inside the earth, daylight at the village oak, and the constable arriving exactly on cue. On one reading it is pure wish-fulfilment, the adult world finally doing its job, with Aunt Mabel and the law showing up because a dog named Scrap raised the alarm. On another, the children never needed rescuing at all; the arrival of adults merely certifies what they already won, since the journal was out of the developers' hands the moment Tom killed the candle. The deeper payoff is reputational: Black Bart's own words, read aloud in his chamber, convert the village's bogeyman into its benefactor, and the developers' plan to erase history collapses because history now has witnesses. What lands is the symmetry: Floss arrived feeling abandoned and ends surrounded, and the treasure that was supposed to be gold turns out to be a story, which is the one thing that cannot be dug up and carried off unless someone agrees to carry it.

1. 1.Mrs. Grudge warns children away from the wood while helping developers buy it. Is she a hypocrite, a pragmatist, or a village that has learned to fear its own history?
2. 2.Tom's father told him Black Bart was a rebel who returned stolen tax money to the village. How does the journal's first line change what 'bandit' means, and who gets to define a person after death?
3. 3.The treasure is described as 'not just gold' but 'proof'. What does it mean that the most valuable object in the story is a written account, and why would developers want to erase it rather than steal the chest?

Children of about eight to twelve who like their adventures misty, muddy and just scary enough, plus any adult reading aloud who enjoys a good rhyme about cursed gold. Also a neat pick for classrooms discussing who controls history.

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