The Adventures of Scout

What inspired three ocean loving engineers to create a series of fun rhyming children’s books?

After hearing about the state of our beaches, a curious little girl sets off on her bike with her bucket and spade and a litter-picker. As she searches for the source of the problem, she rescues a hermit crab living inside a stinky yoghurt pot, meets a whale with a kazoo stuck in its blowhole and gives a hand to a turtle wearing a plastic bag as a t-shirt. Meet Scout, an heroic new role model helping to motivate school-aged children to play a positive role in protecting our natural world and the first 2D ambassador at The Rivers Trust.

The Adventures of Scout is a series of three rhyming books that follow the expeditions of ‘Scout, who likes to figure things out’, an inquisitive young girl who loves to problem solve. After picking up copies of the books at the Outdoor Swimmer Henley Swim Festival, we caught up with original authors Nick, Jon and Matt (aka The3engineers), who came to the project with no previous writing experience, to talk about their motivation, their connection with the ocean and why it’s so important to talk to young people about the problems facing our waterways.

A side hustle named scout

How exactly did three engineers working in submarine design get into writing a series of children’s books? “When we first met back in 2018, we decided to put some time aside on Friday afternoon to create a side project linked to our values and interests, being the environment, health and wellbeing and technology,” said Nick. “As our ideas came together, we came up with a mission to inspire the next generation of problem solvers, by engaging, educating and inspiring children to care about our planet.”

To do this, they needed to create a positive role model and came up with Scout, a young girl who is curious and a natural problem solver. In each of the three stories, Scout finds out about an environmental problem through her parents and goes on a journey to figure out what is happening, meeting animals affected and coming up with solutions to help. At the end of each story are engaging questions and a chance for readers to join ‘Scout’s team’ in helping to pick up litter, plant seeds to feed the bees or upcycle household waste into props to help local habitats.

“Stimulating critical thinking in children and inspiring them to understand how their STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) can play a vital part in their future is a real passion in this project. Who knows, a child inspired by Scout could be the next Boyan Slat (the young Dutch inventor and entrepreneur who founded The Ocean Cleanup) and help tackle these problems in the future. How cool would that be?”

A shared love of water

While the books cover topics such as the decline of bees and the destruction of wildlife habitats, a love of the ocean and waterways is a key theme. Each of the authors has a personal connection with water: Jon rowed the Atlantic as part of the Whisky Atlantic Challenge, Matt grew up in Cornwall near the sea, while Nick enjoys open water swimming and competes in triathlons. Their shared passion inspired the theme of their first book, ‘Stop Dropping Litter!’, which explores how rubbish gets into the sea through some pipes from the river.

“Explaining to children how rubbish, when dropped on the floor, could make its way out to sea is a valuable lesson to explore,” says Jon. “Children contain untapped potential and are super curious at this age. Plus reading is such a powerful mechanism to help young people apply their newly developing critical thinking, which embeds behaviours.”

An engineering approach

Being Systems Engineers, the team took a rather unconventional approach to their story creation. “We like to think holistically about everything. Whether it is the human body, the environment or our waterways, which are the transport arteries between land and the sea,” says Nick. “We are all part of a bigger system and focusing at the source, being our children so to say, we believe we can positively influence change and our future.”

The authors decided to make use of their engineering tools and processes to design the series off the back of two years of market research. “We even spent four months in book shops writing up every rhyming book in the market and developed a tool to analyse their rhyming patterns to find our own winning formula,” says Nick. Six years on, their rhyming children’s book series has reached over 250,000 children.

Where’s Vinnie?

It’s not just the thoughtful storylines that are capturing children’s imaginations. The illustrations, created by Anna Baratashvili from Georgia, are detailed and immersive, creating a world you can really lose yourself in. Children particularly enjoy searching for Scout’s best friend, Vinnie the poison dart frog, who hides on every spread. The author’s next venture is to develop these intricate worlds with a Where’s Wally Eco themed style book – a fun mechanism to teach children about other environmental issues such as deforestation, coral bleaching and over fishing, for example, while searching for Vinnie.

As for our intrepid friend, Scout – as well as aiming to get the books into every primary school and library in the UK and to reach one million children by 2027, The3engineers are seeking investment to create a cartoon to maximise Scout’s reach. “We will be looking to form new collaborations and would love to hear from anyone who might be interested.”

The Adventures of Scout are available on Amazon and via their website, theadventuresofscout.com Follow their journey on Instagram @theadventures.of.scout