How to Make a Book Safe

Your secrets don't have to be locked away in a vault, hide them in plain sight with this book safe.


You may think that secrets must be put in a place where other spies can't get to, such as a big safe or something like that. But the problem with that is that a safe is known for holding valuables, and crooks know this too!

Sometimes it's better to hide your secrets in plain sight. For this you can modify a regular (hard cover) book to be a great hiding place. It may not be as well protected as in a safe, but the upside is that other spies won't know where to look for it!

What you need to make a book safe:

  • Hard cover book that nobody wants to read anymore (double-check with your parents).
  • Sharp Stanley or Exacto knife
  • Ruler
  • Pencil


Book Safe Assembly Instructions

Here's what to do to turn a book into a hiding place. We are going to cut a hole in a number of pages, creating a space where you can hide your stuff...



  1. Open the book fairly in the beginning, but not on page 1. If needed, you can put one or more other books under the front cover to support it, so the pages in which you are going to cut are lying flat.
  1. With the pencil and ruler, draw a rectangle on the right page. Don't draw to close to the edge of the page!

  2. Now we're going to cut into the book. Cutting is done with a sharp knife and should be done by an adult! Put the ruler on one edge of the drawn rectangle, and cut through the pages with the knife against the ruler. Watch your fingers! Don't cut all the way to the edge of the page, and don't to deep, as it's difficult to cut, plus you can skip the pages you just cut, and cut deeper from that point on.

  3. After you have cut rectangles out of the pages you wanted, you'll have a void in the book that looks like this:

  1. Some like to glue the cut pages together with wallpaper paste, but I'm no big fan of that. It's messy, and in my opinion it's not needed to hide your stuff.

  2. Now hide your secrets in your book safe, and lastly put your secret book in a book closet with many more books. Others won't know where to start looking for it. But you know the title of your book, so for you it's no problem!

Here's a great video explanation by a fellow spy and helper, SolarSpy. Congrats on a job well done, Solar!


Go from Book Safe to Kids Spy Equipment
Go to Top Spy Secrets Homepage



Share Intel

New! Comments

Savvy spies can comment here... Just leave me a comment in the box below.