Charlie's Adventures Beyond the Back Gate

A new children's chapter-book series · Ages 7-9

The forest behind the back gate has been waiting.

A seven-year-old boy named Charlie opens the gate at the back of his yard and finds a hidden stream, a curious fox, a perfect oak tree, and a broken bicycle that becomes the start of something big. With his friends Jake and Lucas, and eventually his little sister Max, he builds the kind of summer kids used to have.

Book One launches with a companion Adventure Workbook — together as The Adventure Bundle, $7.99. Quiet wonder, real adventure, hand-painted illustration.

See The Bundle Free First Chapter
Book One cover: The Secret of the Old Oak Tree

The Adventure Bundle

Book One + the Adventure Workbook, together.

The story your kid reads, and the workbook they live in alongside it. Built around the actual chapters — the vocabulary the book introduces, the questions it asks, the things Charlie himself draws inside the story. Designed to be read together and done together.

Book One: The Secret of the Old Oak Tree

Charlie's Adventure Bundle — Book One

The Secret of the Old Oak Tree — eBook plus matching Adventure Workbook.

  • Book One eBook · EPUB · PDF · DRM-free
  • Adventure Workbook · ~44-page printable PDF · activities, drawing pages, real-world quests
  • Built from the book itself · every page traces back to a chapter, vocab word, or question the book actually asks
  • A note from Dad · because that's who wrote it
$7.99 $3.99 + workbook bundled
Notify Me at Launch

The bundle is sold only through this site. Workbook is not available standalone. Available this summer — subscribe below to be first in line.

Prefer the eBook only?

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The Six Books

Book One launches first, with its Adventure Workbook. The next five follow on the same pattern — each its own self-contained adventure that also advances the series arc.

Book 1 cover Launching

Book One

The Secret of the Old Oak Tree

Charlie opens the back gate for the first time and finds a stream, a fox, a broken bicycle, and an oak tree that's been waiting a hundred years for someone to build a fort in it. By the end of the week he has new friends and a plan.

  • Ages 7 to 9
  • 10 chapters · 4 illustrations
  • About 8,200 words
Book 2 cover Up Next

Book Two

Fort Building and the Pulley System

With the perfect oak found, Charlie, Jake, and Lucas set out to build a real fort. There are walls to put up, a pulley to engineer, a rope swing to test, an uninvited squirrel to negotiate with, and a summer storm waiting in the wings.

  • Ages 7 to 9
  • 10 chapters · 4 illustrations
  • About 8,000 words

Coming next in the series: Book 3 — The Fishing Pole Adventure Book 4 — The Winter Fort Book 5 — Max's Big Adventure Book 6 — The Cave Behind the Waterfall

About the Series

Adventures Beyond the Back Gate is a six-book chapter series for early readers. It sits between Magic Tree House and Harry Potter on the reading-level spectrum and is meant to be read aloud or read alone in about 30 to 45 minutes per book.

The setting is a real California mountain forest. The magic, when it shows up, is the quiet kind. Animals appear at the right moments. A fox tilts its head as if asking a question. The series begins with ambiguous wonder and slowly, across the six books, grows into a deeper connection with the forest itself.

The books were written by a dad for his son. They're built around lessons kids actually live: noticing things, building things, sharing things, asking the right questions, staying calm when something goes sideways, and trusting friends with what matters.

6 Books planned in the series
7-9 Target reading age
30-45 Minutes per book, read aloud
∞ Times your kid will want it again

The Author

By Dad

Written by Brook Dickinson — though most days he just goes by Dad.

I wrote this series for my son. He'd been asking for chapter books that were the right reading level but also actually interesting, and the best ones we found were thirty years old. So I started writing the kind of book I wanted him to read — about a kid who opens his back gate and walks into the woods.

We live in the California foothills, where the back gate is real and the oak tree is real and at least one of the foxes is probably real. The books are for kids who would rather be outside, and for the parents who want them to fall in love with reading.

— Dad