Coming off perhaps a touch moralistic, Geoffrey Trease's novel Cue for Treason is a delightful, wholesome children's book. The plot features 14-year-old Peter and 13-year-old Kit, two kids who bump into each other while they are both hiding in William Shakespeare's theater troupe. They've run away from the same town for the same reason -- Sir Philip Morton. As they are accepted in the troupe of actors, the kids form a close friendship based upon their compatibility and circumstances. Little by little, they catch wind of Morton's plot, along with multiple conspirators, to assassinate the Queen of England at one of the upcoming performances. The kids take it upon themselves, with some outside help from the secret service and Sir Francis Bacon, to prevent this horrible tragedy from occurring. Needless to say they are successful.
The real arc of this story is in Peter's character development. At the beginning of the novel, he gets in trouble for angrily throwing a rock at Sir Philip and embarrassing himself. Rather than face the consequences he runs away and hides in the trunk of one of the actors in this traveling troupe. He makes himself useful to the actors in exchange for his continued stay with them. Eventually he realizes that he can't run from his mistakes for long because there's a warrant out for his arrest. When Peter learns that Sir Philip is a real villain and plotting this awful assassination, he takes responsibility for preventing it's carrying out, enlisting help as people are willing and believe him. Regardless, he pursues his goal to the end, devoting all of his time and energy to preventing this tragedy. While he starts out a rambunctious youth, he ends up devoting himself to helping other people.
As mentioned previously, this novel comes off slightly moralistic, but it is a children's book after all. The intended audience is expected to look for a clear nugget of instruction somewhere in the plot. Actually there are several learning experiences in the story, but Peter's personal transformation is clearly the main point. This sort of straight-forward but adventurous story-telling is successful with younger audiences. And this novel features Trease's typical attention to historical detail which has characterized his novels from the beginning and which basically transformed the critical conversation around children's literature.
