Can Bob compete against Fin, Tess and Biff in a range of competitions to be the best top dog? Find out if he wins the overall prize in this lovely, decodable, fiction book written and illustrated by Laura Hambleton.

* Red A/Band 2A books offer predictable text with familiar objects and actions, combined with simple story development.

* Text type: A simple story with a family setting

* Pages 14-15 provide an opportunity for children to recap the story.

* Curriculum links: PSHE, PE

* This book has been quizzed for Accelerated Reader.

This book is part of a book series called Collins Big Cat Phonics .

This book is at the early years level of the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum sets out the programmes of study and attainment targets for all subjects at all 4 key stages. Early years refers to the standards that school and childcare providers must meet for the learning, development and care of children from birth to 5. Each National Curriculum level is divided into sub-levels, where Level C means that a child is working at the lower end of the level, Level B they is working comfortably at that level, and Level A means that they is working at the top end of the level. The Government has suggested a child should achieve the following levels by the end of each school year: (i) Level 1b by end Year 1, Level 2a-c by end Year 2, Level 2a-3b by end Year 3, Level 3 by the end Year 4, Level 3b-4c by the end Year 5, Level 4 by the end Year 6. This book is part of a reading scheme, meaning that it is a book aimed at children who are learning to read. This reading book uses the phonics method. This approach concentrates on teaching children how to map between sounds and spellings, allowing them to decode written words into their constituent sounds. Phonics skill thus involves being able to split the written word 'cat' into the phonemes /k/, /a/, /t/, and to map from letter 'c' to phoneme /k/, from letter 'a' to phoneme /ae/ and from letter 't' to phoneme /t/. Decoding skill is useful when reading unfamiliar words which use regular spelling sequences.

There are 16 pages in this book. This book was published 2013 by HarperCollins Publishers .

Collins UK has been publishing educational and informative books for almost 200 years. LAURA HAMBLETON graduated from the Norwich School of Art and Design and has since been based in London, building a successful career as a designer, author and illustrator of children's books. Besides being name Commended winner of the 2002 V&A Award for Illustration, Laura was also long-listed for the Booktrust's The Big Picture, Best New Illustrators Award, in 2008. She also gives workshops at festivals, bookstores, schools and activity centres throughout Britain.