The five little beans were conceived in August 2007. Their creation was partly inspired by the runner beans from The Compost Heap...

Runner bean card images copyright © Compost Heap Ltd.

'I started wondering what other beans get up to and a friendly little haricot bean bounced down the garden path of my imagination singing 'here we go!' said Darcy. 'The link between the bean, its name and its personality was obvious and that's how Have-a-Go Bean was born. Okey-Dokey Bean was next to jump onto the scene because that's my eldest daughter's pet name for aduki beans. And, as it takes all sorts to make a good team, Bored Bean, Could-We Bean and No-No Bean followed swiftly behind. Everyone knows beans means farts and I felt sure the five little beans would put their wind power to good use; being into renewable energy myself the idea for the first story came quite easily. 'The BeanyJet Adventure' was great fun to write and my youngest brother Simon, also a bean fan, was keen to help the story come alive. We thought it would be cool to take photos of the five little beans on their adventure so after we'd sketched out some image ideas we made a model of the BeanyJet, chose a sunny day, packed the Fujifilm FinePix S5500 digital camera and some beans and set off for our friends' garden.'

'It was tricky to get the photos right because the sun kept going behind the clouds,' said Simon. 'We had to wait poised for action until it came out, then it was "GO GO GO!!!" to get the shot. It was pretty daring too...At one point I was balanced precariously on a ladder holding the BeanyJet on strings over Darcy's head while I took a photo with the camera outstretched in my other hand! We all had great fun - my niece especially had a whale of a time throwing stones in the bucket for the 'splash' photo. Another day we borrowed the neighbour's cat and some of my niece's toys and then I took the remaining photos in my kitchen in Bristol. There were over 700 photos altogether! Once we'd chosen the best ones it was over to me to make the bean characters come to life with my computer by drawing their faces, adding shadows and erasing strings, and finally laying all the images and text out into book format. It was the first time I've tried to do anything like this and I learnt an awful lot. I'm really chuffed with the end result!'

'It was amazing to see the story taking shape,' said Darcy. 'Because we'd decided to publish it ourselves we were able to tweak the text, images and design until we were completely happy. Simon's worked wonders and the book is better than I even imagined. We think you'll agree the five little beans are totally lovable!'