“Gropen (The Hole Behind the Gym) is a life-affirming tribute to the joy of free play, without concern for certified sandpits or health and safety regulations. The book uses great humour and superb imagery to show that imaginations thrive in unsupervised and untouched spaces. Using a child’s perspective throughout, children are portrayed as a “we-persona”, determining childhood on their own terms right in front of the adults who so fear this primal force. Never can there have been a more colourful book about the dull monotony of school life.” 2018 Gropen won the August Prize.