“SAVE me!” Conerad cried.

“Wait!” Cone-Vera shouted.

“I don’t wait for cones, I collect them,” growled the Cone Collector in a horrid voice as he drove away.

Conestance was furious. “You are just SO NASTY! Bring Conerad back here NOW!”

Another exciting situation develops in the world of traffic cones, which are not the inanimate objects we believe them to be - at least not in children’s author Chris Madeley’s books.

Grandmother Chris is the brains behind a series of books about cones in their natural habitat, not only on roads, but railway lines too, and in various other settings.

Beautifully illustrated by Bradford artist Zara Hussain and launched in York’s National Railway Museum, they tell of the adventures of Cone families and their friends.

It is a hard life, particularly on the motorway, knowing that any minute you could get picked up and moved by the Cone Collector. This fate befalls Conerad, who to the relief of his pals, is rescued by Clawd, the truck with a metal grab claw.

The idea for the books - the fourth is currently in production - was sparked as Chris and her husband Keith travelled on motorways and A-roads.

“Our business was based in Bradford and we spent a lot of time driving up and down the M1 and A1. This entailed countless hours sitting in and going through roadworks, particularly as this was the time when construction of a big new junction south of the Leicester Forest Services on the M1 was under way.

“There was, as usual, a proliferation of cones and to turn the negative of being bored sitting in endless traffic into a positive, I started to contemplate what would happen if the cones had a life of their own, which of course, we know that they do, when you consider all the strange places in which we see them.”

Chris wrote the first book Meet the Cones in 1995 when on holiday in Madeira.

“It was hand-written in pencil as laptops were not yet freely available. I had been thinking about the stories and how I wanted them to evolve for some time so they came easily. I had already decided that my two characters would be called Conestance and Conerad, they would come alive- but only when humans were not looking - and have adventures, learning many valuable lessons along the way.”

She adds: “What has been interesting is developing the characters as we have moved forwards into different situations. In the second book, Cones Make New Friends, children meet the other two main characters and the four go forward into all the stories. There are not just these four friends, they have guardians to care for them, they make friends and, of course, there are all the trucks, diggers, dumpers and other vehicles.

The dialogue is peppered with ‘Cone-speak’. “Look at all the words in the English language which start with con . . . add an e and you get a cone word,” explains Chris. “Coneversation, conesideration etc. This helps children deal with using an e in the middle of a word and how it changes the short vowel preceding a double consonant and turns it into a long one: conversation/coneversation. This goes down very well in school and the children are very clever at spotting words which can be “coneverted”!

She tested out the stories on youngsters at Sandy Lane Primary School in Allerton, Bradford, where a friend of hers used to teach. “I visited the school every day for two weeks to read a different story each day. At the end of the period I ran a competition for the children to create pictures and write stories about the cones and was delighted with the results. I have kept their wonderful work.”

Former Bradford University, student Zara illustrates the stories. “She is incredibly talented and I am sure that she can see inside my head,” says Chris. “Her depictions of the Cones are extremely clever.”

The books have captured the imagination of both children and adults. “Parents have told me that both they and their children enjoy the humour and that the stories stimulate conversation when they are out.

“One of the many reasons for the stories is to encourage children to be observant in all sorts of situations. They include lots of vehicles and places which children can easily identify. The stories encourage children to have lots of fun but always to play safely and be aware of dangers.”

Chris encourages the corporate world to become involved with the production of the books and has received support from a wide variety of companies.

“It is essential that the books are factually absolutely correct when dealing with areas of safety and so I need to be able to do research with the particular safety teams. Grand Central sponsored Cones on the Rails and took me on a train with their safety team to highlight areas which children must be made aware of.

“I was thrilled at the launch of this book at the National Railway Museum in York when the head of the Railway Safety and Standards Board came and spoke, publicly saying that this was the best children’s book on safety on the rails in a generation.”

Now Northern Powergrid have joined forces with Christine for the next book. “I am indebted to the safety and education teams at Northern Powergrid for all their guidance,” she says.

We have just had an order for books from a chain of restaurants, ‘The Botanist’, for young diners to read.

Leeds Beckett University has involved some of their students in animating the Cones and are also are looking at creating an App.

* The cones books are published by Fisher King Publishing and are available from Amazon or bookshops, price £6.99 Facebook: the conesbooks; W: the conesbooks.com; T:@funwiththe cones