The property

This one is ours. FUMANS is an in-house children's picture-poem concept, written, designed and published independently: not third-party client work.

Fumans are Furniture-Humans: cheeky souls hiding inside furniture and other inanimate objects. The creative engine is a way of seeing rather than a conventional plot. A child spots a face or a body in an ordinary object; small expressive features are added; a short rhyme reveals the personality; and the reader is invited to keep playing the game in the real world. The word started as a contraction of “furniture” and “humans”, then expanded to mugs, cacti, trees, toothbrushes, fruit, taps, lamps, buildings, trains, bins, postboxes, toilet rolls and public infrastructure. The formal definition describes Fumans as experts at hiding in plain sight, catchable only by expert Fuman seekers.

The concept grew from a game Kris played after his daughter Izzy was born in 2021, noticing personalities in objects and countryside shapes. He spent roughly a year turning the game into a book for her first birthday. Friends and family wanted copies, which led to Amazon print-on-demand. Izzy is explicitly the first Fuman seeker and the emotional centre of the brand; Ashley is credited in the origin story as patient and encouraging while the books were made around full-time work.

Format and world rules

The audience is children aged 0–5, with parents and carers as the essential co-reading audience. The format is a square 24-page paperback picture-poem, twenty self-contained photographic vignettes per title. The visual method is real photographs with drawn eyes, mouths, brows, limbs or small expressive marks composited onto them. Pages are clean white squares: photograph above, short black sans-serif rhyme below, widely spaced minimal typography. The wordmark sets FUMANS in individually coloured letters: pink, dark blue, blue/teal, mint, orange and red.

The canon is deliberately tight. Fumans already exist in ordinary objects, so seekers discover rather than create them. They hide in plain sight, domestic or public, tiny or architectural. Learning to notice them makes you a seeker. Objects have emotions, habits and private lives when nobody is looking. Living animals are not currently Fumans, though plants and trees can qualify through perceived object shapes. There are no recurring named characters: the repeatable identity is the species and the act of seeking. The current creative preference is for subtler “caught in the wild” Fumans, blink-and-you-miss-it, rather than overt cartoon characters.

Published titles and launch

• Fumans (book one). Published 15 February 2023, independently through Amazon. ASIN B0BVT8RQXK, ISBN-13 979-8372829527. A 24-page square paperback whose dedication identifies Izzy as the first Fuman seeker. Vignettes include coffee mugs in love, insecure cacti, a London turret, a tree with birds in its hair, toothbrush “wiggle machines”, railway signals, a shy tap, quarrelling baskets, tired lamps and a handsome clock. The final page promises more, establishing series intent.
• Fumans 02 (book two). Launched 18 October 2023. ASIN B0CL9S2KFH, ISBN-13 979-8856246710. Twenty new vignettes push into the kitchen, park, toilet and public realm: an exhausted singing-pot pair, a high-speed train, an unwell robot vacuum, a shocked milk bottle, a sneezing park bin, smitten plant pots, explosive-nostril bath taps, a hungry postbox, an embarrassed toilet roll and a cheering station roof.
• The sequel launch. Amazon metadata and pricing work, a one-day at-cost Amazon campaign, a press release, a media pack, local media outreach, social posts and AI-assisted planning, a deliberately scrappy launch with no traditional publisher behind it.
• Retained property. fumans.co.uk with About, original-book and Fumans 2 pages; Instagram and Facebook presence; Amazon listings for both titles; complete 2023 book proofs and a page-by-page source record. A domain transfer away from iPage was completed in December 2023.

Results

NO. 6, in Amazon UK's Visionary & Metaphysical Fantasy Fiction for Children category

The accurate public claim is “Amazon category bestseller”, a number-six position within one category, not number six across all Amazon books. That distinction is kept deliberately. The W'A.I case study “Boosting Engagement for 'Fumans' Children's Book with AI” later reframed the launch as a professional demonstration of metadata work, audience analysis, social strategy, media mapping, press development and measurable impact.

Several extensions were explored and none are completed: hardback or board-book production; forest, beach and space editions; a Wimbledon street-discovery trail; a subtler photographic redesign; activity formats, social submissions, merchandise and seasonal editions. Animation conversations took place with Arcus Studios, but no option, pitch or production agreement is evidenced. No completed animation, hardback, third book or merchandise is claimed. Permissions for recognisable buildings, products and public artwork would need confirming before licensing. The Animal Collective is a separate collaborative children's-book project, not FUMANS canon, with no publication or merchandise manufacture confirmed.

The work