`It is dark in the park. It is dark in the street.' This superb patterned non-fiction text uses atmospheric illustrations to show what happens in the neighbourhood when it is dark. Who can be found in the city streets when children are tucked up in bed? Which animals prowl in the wood by the light of the moon?

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

* Text type - Non-fiction recount.

* Pages 14 and 15 repeat the scenes explored throughout the book, allowing children the chance to recap on the narrative, and answer the question 'Where is it dark?'

* This book has been levelled for Reading Recovery

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

This book is at the following key stages: Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 . 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. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) covers children from birth to age 5 years. KS1 covers school years 1 and 2, and ages 5-7 years. This book is at national curriculum levels Early Years, Stepping Stones . 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. Stepping Stones relates to development in Reception. 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 aimed at children in primary school. 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 2004 by HarperCollins Publishers .

Claire Llewellyn lives in Hertford and is an established non-fiction author for children. Collins UK has been publishing educational and informative books for almost 200 years. 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.