Bruce Springsteen has penned a children's book based on his music.

The rock icon will write the text for 'Outlaw Pete', which shares its name with the opening ballad on his 2009 album 'Working on a Dream', and he has hinted it will be darker than many more traditional stories aimed at kids.

According do The Independent newspaper, he said: '''Outlaw Pete' is essentially the story of a man trying to outlive and outrun his sins.''

The book will be published by Simon & Schuster in November, and their president Jonathan Karp insisted fans of Westerns - both adults and children - will enjoy the story they're telling.

He said: ''It's a book for anybody who loves a good Western. It's for readers of all ages. It has an adult sensibility.

''Outlaw Pete is a quintessentially Springsteen character, brought to life, and like the song, the book is a meditation on fate.

''Pete is robbing banks at a very young age, and he does a lot of things he regrets, but as the lyric says, you can't undo the things they've done.''

Meanwhile, illustrator Frank Caruso - who originally had the idea of taking the song from headphones to the printed page - insisted the character could become one of the literary greats.

He explained: ''Like Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Dorothy Gale and, for me, even Popeye, Outlaw Pete cuts deep into the folklore of our country and weaves his way into the fabric of great American literary character.''