This comical story is a patterned, counting text about a band of pirates searching for treasure. One-by-one, they get into trouble and make a hasty retreat back to the pirate ship. Helpful vignettes of the pirates at the top of each page help children count how many pirates are left.

* Red B/ Band 2B books offer simple but varied text with familiar objects and actions, combined with simple story development and a satisfying conclusion.

* Text type - A story with predictable structure and patterned language

* The map on pages 14 and 15 shows the trail the pirates take from their ship to the treasure cave and back again, and can be used to help recap and retell the story.

* Paul Shipton is also the author of Collins Big Cat titles See-saw, Get the Fruit! and The Robot.

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 has been graded for interest at 4-5 years. 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 2012 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. Paul Shipton is an award-winning children's author. He published his first children's book in 1991, (Zargon Zoo). He lives and works in Wisconsin, USA. Joan Poulson is an experienced playwright, poet and anthologist. She compiled 'Pictures in my Mind' for the Hodder Wayland poetry list, 'Celebration' for UNICEF and 'Girls are like Diamonds' for OUP. Kelly Waldek did a graphic design degree (specialising in illustration) and has illustrated many works for Hodder Wayland, Belitha, Brilliant Books and BBC Education.