Collins Big Cat supports every primary child on their reading journey from phonics to fluency. Top authors and illustrators have created fiction and non-fiction books that children love to read. Book banded for guided and independent reading, there are reading notes in the back, comprehensive teaching and assessment support and ebooks available.

All you need to know about capturing a castle, with lessons from 700 years of castle-capturing history.

Lime Plus/Band 11+ books provide challenging plots and vocabulary as well as opportunities to practise inference, prediction and reading stamina.

Pages 46 and 47 allow children to re-visit the content of the book, supporting comprehension skills, vocabulary development and recall.

Ideas for reading in the back of the book provide practical support and stimulating activities.

Rob is a dad and he writes books. He works hidden away in an upstairs room so he can get some peace and quiet, but if he looks out of the window, and stretches his neck just a little, he can actually see a real-live castle. In fact, the house Rob live in started out as a hovel, built in one of the castle's outer moats. There's even bits of smashed up castle in its walls. So what better person to write about castles? Rob has pieces of one all around him, and even a bit of moat to wade about in if he needs to practise my castle capturing skills. He doesn’t have an elephant though, or a whale – and these can come in useful, as you'll see.