Follow cabin boy Bill on his journey to becoming a pirate as he and Blackbeard battle a terrifying sea monster. This adventure story is wonderfully written by Ciaran Murtagh and illustrated by Nathan Aardvark.

* Collins Big Cat Progress books are specifically designed for children at Key Stage 2 who have a Key Stage 1 reading level, giving them age-appropriate texts that they can read, building their confidence and fostering positive attitudes towards reading.

* Text type: An adventure story

* Curriculum links:

This book features in the following series: Collins Big Cat Progress, Phonics Progress .

This book is at the following key stages: Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2 . A key stage is any of the fixed stages into which the national curriculum is divided, each having its own prescribed course of study. At the end of each stage, pupils are required to complete standard assessment tasks. KS1 covers school years 1 and 2, and ages 5-7 years. KS2 covers school years 4, 5 and 6, and ages 8-11 years. This book is aimed at children in primary school.

This book is at interest level(s) Book Band Copper, Collins Stage 12, Book Band 12. This book is part of a reading scheme, meaning that it is a book aimed at children who are learning to read. This book is part of a HiLo reading scheme, combining high interest relative to the required reading skill. This reading scheme has multiple levels. This book has been specially written for struggling readers. 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 32 pages in this book. This book was published 2014 by HarperCollins Publishers .

Jonathan was born in 1965, the son of a rig fitter and a primary school teacher. He first developed his skills as a writer and illustrator while studying architecture, illustrating poems and lyrics that he had written. After leaving college, he worked as an architect for several years, before pursuing a career in children's books. In addition to writing books such as Bringing Down the Moon, and Ruby Flew Too, he also paper-engineers pop-up books. Collins UK has been publishing educational and informative books for almost 200 years. Ciaran Murtagh is an author and writer for children's television. Greg Foot is a science presenter on TV, online, on the radio and at live events. He's recently been recognized as one of the leading science communicators in the UK and named an engagement fellow for the Wellcome Trust - a multimillion-pound charity that supports biomedical science and engagement.