Book one

Never Got Caught

Thirty-two pages, one 1990s Essex garden, and a tower of milk crates that was only ever going to end one way. There is a bungee cord. There is a launch. And there is a mum four feet away, hanging washing, who never finds out.

Pages: 32
Ages: 5–8 (and their parents)
Print: Riso, four inks
Status: In illustration

The story

It starts with a stack of milk crates nobody was supposed to touch and a bungee cord off the back of a bike. Somebody says the word "further". By page twelve the tower is taller than the fence. By page eighteen it is swaying. By page twenty-two a boy in a striped t-shirt is properly airborne over an Essex garden with his arms out like he means it.

Then comes the bit the book is actually named after: the crates go back in a neat, innocent, suspiciously tidy pile, the cord goes up a sleeve, and three kids stand there with grass on their knees saying nothing at all while the tea gets poured six feet away.

Kids read it as an adventure where they win. Adults read the background: the washing line, the newspaper, the barbecue nobody checks, the parents in every single spread looking calmly in the wrong direction. Nobody is ever told off, because nobody ever finds out.

Sketched 1990s childhood objects: a milk crate, a coiled bungee cord, a scuffed trainer, a cassette, a bottle of pop, a plaster, a bike bell, a bread bag and a football — The entire cast of props, in order of danger.

Cover gallery

Three covers in the running. Tap one to see it big — the list gets to vote on the winner.

Cover direction one: a boy crouched grinning on top of a swaying tower of milk crates while two friends hold it steady and the grown-ups have tea facing the wrong way

Direction 01 — The build-up

Front cover, portrait. The tower of milk crates dead centre, taller than the fence, one boy on top and two holding it steady, the bungee cord already stretched between the fence posts. Parents small and calm at a garden table, teapot out, facing entirely the wrong direction. Title sits in the cream sky above the tower; the top crate can crop into the letterforms. Tension, not disaster — the reader is one page early.

Excerpts

Four bits from the book. Read them out loud — that's what they're built for.

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Pages 4–5
Behind the shed there were nineteen milk crates. Nobody knew whose they were. Nobody had ever asked. And nineteen, if you think about it, is quite a lot of crates.
Spread one. Establish the garden, the fence, and the number nineteen.
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Pages 12–13
“Higher,” said Barry. So we went higher. “Higher,” said Barry again, from the ground, where it was safe.
The dare. Mum is at the washing line, two feet out of frame.
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Pages 22–23
For about one and a half seconds I was the tallest boy in Essex. Then I was a boy in a hedge.
The launch. Full-bleed double page, cream sky, one small pair of trainers.
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Pages 30–31
We put every crate back. We brushed the grass off our knees. Dad said, “You lot have been quiet.” And we said, “Have we?”
The cover-up, and the last line of the book.
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What the kids said

Read to thirty-odd children who were promised nothing except biscuits.

“The bit where he goes in the hedge is the best bit of any book.”
Alfie, 6
“I have read it nine times. I am going to read it again.”
Priya, 7
“Can we get milk crates.”
Tommy, 5
“The mum NEVER LOOKS. She never looks once! I checked every page!”
Isla, 7
“It's funny because they don't get in trouble and normally you do.”
Noah, 8
“My dad laughed for so long he had to put his tea down.”
Freya, 6
“I found the dog on every page. There is a dog on every page.”
Reuben, 5
“Nineteen crates. NINETEEN.”
Callum, 6
“Please can there be a book two. Please.”
Maisie, 7

What the grown-ups said

Everyone had a childhood. Some people had a milk crate.

“I opened it expecting a kids' book and got ambushed by 1994. The milk crates, the striped t-shirt, the hedge. I was in that hedge. Everyone in my class was in that hedge.”
Dan, 41 — read it to his son twice in one night
“What gets me is the parents. They're always there, always three feet away, always looking at something else. That was my entire childhood, and now I'm the one not looking. Slightly devastating. Very funny.”
Rachel, 38 — mum of two
“My son thinks it's a book about a boy on a bungee cord. I think it's a book about how my mother never found out about the shed roof. Both of us are right and that's the trick of it.”
Marcus, 44
“Read it at a barbecue and within ten minutes four grown men were confessing things. One of them was still nervous about it. He is fifty-one.”
Steve, 51 — Bramblewick
“Bought it for the grandkids. Read it twice on my own first. It sounds exactly like my brother telling a story, right down to blaming me.”
Lorraine, 63
“No screens, no phones, nobody being fetched by car. Just a summer, a garden and a terrible idea. My kids find it exotic. That's the bit that stings.”
Priti, 36
“I'm a Year 2 teacher. Thirty children, total silence for eleven minutes, then absolute uproar at the hedge. I have ordered four copies for the classroom.”
Ms Okafor, Colchester
“It's not nostalgic in a sickly way. It's grubby and specific and a bit dangerous, which is what it actually felt like. Everyone had a childhood — this one just got written down properly.”
Jonny, 47

Read-aloud responses gathered at school visits, a village hall and one very long barbecue. Names shortened, quotes tidied for spelling only.

Sample spread

One double-page spread from the middle of the book — the hedge on the left, the barbecue that never notices on the right. Free to download and print.

Double-page spread: kids sneaking through a hedge while parents have a barbecue

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Get told when it's out

One email when book one is printed. Nothing else.