Chris Riddell

You know, this is, this is the way you see it.

Did you know, Kate, I have no idea.

I mean, you know, a book about pirates, it's not going to sell very well.

It's a very obscure topic.

I don't think children like pirates at all.

I don't know what Neil was thinking.

Pirates and babysitters.

I think that's the two things that he's connected.

And I think as a sort of bedtime story, it's just wonderful.

It has, you know, as you say, pirates, that's a good hook.

It's also sort of one of these lovely, almost Dr. Seuss style sort of stories about parents going off and leaving the kids in the capable hands of a sort of buccaneering pirate cook.

His crew soon arrive and mayhem ensues all in this lovely sort of cadence that Neil has, a sort of rhyming cadence.

So it is just a delicious bedtime story, a lovely sort of picture book.

And Neil does this wonderful thing where, you know, when he gets excited by a project, particularly if it's a short text like this, he'll often call me on the phone and my mobile phone will go and I will see, you know, caller unknown or sort of, you know, because Neil is often in far-flung places.

I'm never quite sure where in the globe he might be calling me from.

And I found myself on a train heading up to London, a commuter train, back in the days when

we sat on trains with impunity and my phone went off and it was Neil calling from some other time zone in the middle of America.

And he read me this story over the phone.

And I wanted to call for hush in the train carriage and put my phone on speaker and just hold it up and say,

and tell the commuters that Neil was going to read us a bedtime story.