Dear Reader
We thought you might like to know how and why our author decided to write books about us, so here is the story behind the stories.

Marion (our author) was cold one night on her narrow boat and so bought a nice hot water bottle with a friendly teddy bear cover at a local charity shop. While she was lying in her bunk, cuddling her new 'hotty', she thought that it would be much more fun to have a hot water bottle cover with a boating theme and the image of a working boatman came into her head. So, as soon as she and her husband got home, Marion got out her materials and cottons and made the hotty cover and called it Bert. But then it seemed to her that Bert was lonely and that he needed a wife and so she made Betty to keep him company.

Once Marion got to know us, we told her all about our adventures on the canals and it wasn't long before she was writing them down as children's books.

Oh, by the way, we are two Victorian wooden dolls dressed in working boaters' costumes - because that is the period that the stories are about. We have a lovely, gentle horse called Beauty, who pulls our boat, and a daft dog called Ben who keeps us all company.

Unlike some children's books, the Bert & Betty stories aren't all soppy and dumbed down. They show you that life for us 19th century boat people was tough - with not much money, hardly any holidays, whole families packed into only a few square feet of cabin and endless days of very hard work. But, don't worry, even though we had some rough times, we also had fun (and sometimes more excitement than we bargained for!), so we're sure you'll enjoy our stories.

The pictures in the books are photographs, that Marion took, of us working (and sometimes relaxing) on our boat Bella, on the canals or in the countryside around them - like where Beauty went lame or Bert loaded cargo on Braunston Wharf!

There are lots of stories about us - three are available for you to enjoy now and more will be published in 2009. So, happy reading.

With best wishes from