All well and good... but in fiction, these groups can actually be up to something halfway serious — to the point that they aren't merely fantasy clubs, but secret societies in their own right.
In contrast to other "secret" kid's clubs, these organizations are rarely spoken of to outsiders and actively hidden from the prying eyes of adults. What makes them so necessarily secret varies, though it usually involves activities that their parents really wouldn't approve of. Perhaps they're engaging in a potentially dangerous hobby; perhaps they're a team of Kid Heroes — or Enfant Terrible supervillains; perhaps they're Snooping Little Kids investigating crimes or paranormal activity; perhaps they have access to some kind of rare magic or technology that nobody else can use; they may even be saddled with a mission that adults can't — or won't — handle. Whatever the case, the kids are running the show in this clandestine agency.
The exact nature and size of the secret society also varies, ranging from three-person gangs of secretive youngsters delving into magic, to dozens of kids forming La Résistance against an occupying villain, all the way to nationwide Mystery Cults composed entirely of children. However, it's not uncommon for these groups to be secretly managed — or at least overseen — by adults, some of them with even shadier motives than the society itself.
In grittier stories, these secret societies might be composed of runaways and orphans, and survive through criminal activity, most commonly serving as pickpockets and spies — although much nastier activities may be involved. Others might be so determined to live free of adult interference that they live in the wilderness or in some other realm entirely, in which case, don't be surprised if you encounter references to Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.
Compare Students' Secret Society, which takes place mostly at school and tends to skew somewhat older, up to college age.
Examples
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Comic Books
- The Childrens Crusade features the Free Country, an entire secret realm founded by children who went missing during the Children's Crusade and populated by other children they've rescued from terrible situations over the centuries (some of their denizens were slaves, at least one was a victim of the Holocaust, and another was a sexual abuse survivor). The story sees this secret realm suddenly escalating its efforts to "rescuing" whole villages of children from the normal world, convinced that some terrible danger is imminent, which results in Dorothy Spinner, Tefe Holland, Tim Hunter, and Maxine Baker getting taken and The Dead Boy Detectives trying to find the Free Country and bring all the missing children home.
- In Stillwater, it's eventually revealed that the children of the eponymous town have grown disgruntled after decades of not being allowed to grow up and have formed a vast secret society. Their goal? Bring down the Judge's corrupt administration and allow people to leave the Immortality Field so they can start aging again. After decades of development, they have a huge treetop base and enough experience to outthink adults - to the point that they even cut a deal with the mercenaries to stage a coup d'état. The twist is that the kids don't want to abandon Stillwater at all: they just want to grow up enough for them to enjoy their immortality as adults.
Fan Works
- Played with in The Land of What Might-Have-Been: the Empire of Unbridled Radiance is home to a government-maintained secret society known as the Childlike Researchers, a group of young geniuses and Child Mages gathered together to serve the Empress. They're quartered in a secret laboratory hidden deep beneath the capital city of Exemplar, and information on the group is restricted to mage-surgeons and other relevant VIPs. However, it's soon revealed that the Childlike Researchers aren't children at all, but adults suffering from a magical disease that periodically causes them to physically regress. Worse still, decades of being treated like children gradually causes them to lose their adult memories and personalities, leaving them to obliviously serve the Empress as good little boys and girls, so they're usually mistaken for kids when they go out in public anyway. In the final chapters, it's revealed that the Empress is expanding the Researcher membership with deliberately infected intellectual offenders from around the Empire, trusting that their condition will destroy their "deviant" personalities and allow them to use their abilities as well-behaved children of the Empire. However, it's because of this brutal expansion that Dorothy and a magically-disguised Elphaba are able to sneak through enemy territory without raising suspicion.
Films — Animated
- In South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, the kids create a secret group aptly named La Résistance dedicated to save Terrence & Philip from being executed.
Films — Live Action
- In Children of the Corn (1984) the children of Gatlin, Nebraska, have all been indoctrinated into a cult that has successfully murdered every adult in town. They are under the thrall of "He Who Walks Behind The Rows," an entity that requires regular Human Sacrifice.
Literature
- The crux of Animorphs features a group of adolescents becoming aware of a covert Alien Invasion and, with the aid of Andalite morphing technology, becoming an underground resistance movement. Naturally, when not trying out new morphs and scouting new missions, they struggle to fit their activities around school, family events, and homework - not to mention the effort of trying to keep their work a secret from their parents. Because the invading Yeerks can literally be anyone, the Animorphs are very cautious about seeking allies and even more so when the time comes to look for new members, to the point that their recruits are invariably fellow kids: an Andalite cadet stranded on Earth, a cocky new kid on the block with a VIP father, and an entire ward of disabled children. The "secret" aspect goes out the window when the Yeerks figure out a means of identifying the Animorphs by blood testing, forcing them to evacuate their parents and go on the run.
- In the Give Yourself Goosebumps novel Trapped in Bat Wing Hall, the young player character is encouraged to join a secret group of kids known as the Horror Club, known for convening in the eponymous mansion for scavenger hunts. Their true nature depends on which of the two main plotlines you choose: in the Blue Team plotline, the Horror Club are just thrillseeking children trespassing on an abandoned building, in which case they end up becoming potential allies when you end up getting turned into a bat... but in the Red Team plot, the Club is a gang of monsters in disguise, either seeking prey or looking for new members to convert into monsters.
- In It, the Losers Club starts off as a coalition of like-minded outcasts getting together to escape the various miseries of life in Derry, most prominently bullying by Butch Bowers and his clique. However, as time goes on, they adopt a much more serious and secretive objective that no adult can be entrusted with: learning the true nature of the eponymous monster preying on Derry and killing it once and for all. For good measure, after they stop It for the first time, they disband and most of them forget all about the Club and everything that happened in Derry.
- In Jacob Two-Two Meets The Hooded Fang, there is the "Child Power" organisation. They are not entirely secret, because they make a dramatic appearance in the courtroom when Jacob is sentenced to the children's prison for insulting a grown-up, but the grown-ups are terrified of them. They do not stop him being sent to prison, because they need Jacob's help to locate the prison, and to rescue him and the other children.
Live-Action TV
- In American Horror Story: Hotel, after being vampirized by Alex Lowe in a desperate attempt to cure his terminal measles, Max Ellison forms his own secret pack of young vampires by spreading the virus to his entire middle school class. Under his leadership, the pack kill their way through the rest of the school, successfully feign innocence when the police investigate, and then begin covertly preying on adults throughout the neighborhood - including their own parents. Realizing her mistake, Alex lures the kids to the Hotel Cortez and locks them in the countess's vault - where they are all eaten alive by fellow vampire Ramona Royale.
- The Andy Griffith Show: One episode sees Opie getting to join a secret club of his friends, even getting the venerated title of Light Keeper (which means he's in charge of the old candle the group uses for their meetings). Unfortunately, their meeting place is an old barn owned by a curmudgeonly farmer who habitually runs them off. This actually leads to a problem when the barn accidentally burns down.
- Are You Afraid of the Dark? has the Midnight Society - a group of preteens who gather around a campfire in the woods at night to share ghost stories. There are even initiation rituals for new members, such as being led to the fire and telling a story while blindfolded. The reboot of the series takes it further with current members being masked for the initiation.
- In the Doctor Who two-part episodes "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" a small group of homeless children have been surviving the worst of the Blitz by breaking into unattended houses during bombing raids and availing themselves to anything they can eat. They are led by Nancy, the eldest girl and something of a surrogate mother to the group in the wake of her brother Jamie's death; thanks to her leadership, they have managed to escape the notice of the police... but unfortunately not the Undead Child that Jamie has become. The twist is that Nancy is older than she looks; she's actually Jamie's mother, having passed him off as her sibling in order to avoid the stigma being a teenage Struggling Single Mother in the 1940s - hence why the Child is so determined to find his "mummy".
- Odd Squad: The show focuses on the eponymous organization, whose agents are all children and fight oddities using gadgets and mathematics. Standing in their way is a Rogues Gallery of odd villains who love to cause oddness by any means possible, ranging from a Musical Assassin to an Improbable Weapon User who uses jam as a weapon. The organization has been around during the cavemen times and is very high-tech.
- The Animal Army of Sweet Tooth is a society of runaway kids and teenagers devoted to protecting Hybrids at all coasts. Living apart from the rest of post-apocalyptic society in an abandoned amusement park, they mimic and name themselves for animals in the belief that they are superior to humans (hence why Hybrids are treated with such reverence). Though they spend a good deal of their time indulging in harmless fun, they are very effective at staging raids on Last Men convoys and have no moral qualms about executing poachers. Their leader, Bear, is naturally an ally to Gus and after being deposed and replaced by Tiger, she becomes a permanent travelling companion alongside Jepperd.
Tabletop Games
- The Chronicles of Darkness game Innocents may result in the player characters establishing these as a result of their experiences, forming secret groups to pool supernatural knowledge and resist further attempts to prey on them. One example in the gamebook, "The Forever Club," starts out as a disorganized study group of junior anime fans - only to find themselves having to delve into the occult when a life-drinking old lady targets one of their number as a means of extending her lifespan.
- Rocket Age features the Yondari, a secret society of child spies among the Deadly Decadent Court of Martian royalty. Its members can be as old as sixteen, but the majority are under ten years old.
Video Games
- Divinity: Original Sin II: A gang of thief children live in a lair in Arx's Absurdly Spacious Sewer. Having managed at least one dangerous, high-profile heist, they keep their existence a secret; you can learn of them by fast-talking their fence or questioning the ghost of their latest fall guy.
- In The Secret World, Solomon Island is home to a secret society of local children known as the League of Monster-Slayers. Based in a huge treehouse in the southern forests of the island, the kids have set themselves the mission of hunting down and killing the local supernatural menaces - because most adults on the island are wilfully oblivious to the supernatural. Surprisingly for the dark setting, they've had an impressive success rate, aided on occasional by a Child Mage from nearby Innsmouth Academy. For added fun, the lore entries mention that they used to operate by a strict no-girls policy up until one prospective female member started offering up severed wendigo fingers as her entrance fees. In one mission, you get to play along with their initiation rituals to see how they work in the wild - or rather, worked: by the time you arrive, the Fog and everything that came with it has killed all but one of the members.
- In Warframe, the Ventkids are a semi-clandestine group of orphaned thieves, pickpockets, and mechanics who reside in the ventilation shafts that wrap around Fortuna. Having lost their biological families to debtors or abandonment, they stick together as a "logical fam" willing to steal parts and blueprints from Nef Anyo's facilities on behalf of Solaris United. Together they have enough clout to act as a Syndicate and offer K-Drive parts to the Tenno to customize their own Cool Board for travel and combat.
Western Animation
- While more "coterie" than "covert", the titular Kids Next Door from Codename: Kids Next Door are an organization with international reach, comprised of kids fighting for the rights of kids in a world ruled by adults. While the premise sounds ridiculous at face value, this is set in a world where there are adults, teenagers and some kids who are outright supervillains out to eradicate all the positive aspects of childhood, whether it requires brainwashing, enslavement, artificially aging them into adulthood or just straight-up murdering them. What the KND is collectively differs between seasons, operating anywhere between a paramilitary espionage-organization, to a guerilla-army, an international Super Team, to even a nation unto itself!
