Meg and her mum go to the market with their donkey, but find that listening to everyone else's advice along the way doesn't always make for a smooth journey. This humorous fiction story is based on Aesop's fable The Farmer, His Son and the Donkey and is written by Simon Puttock.

* Meg and her mum go to the market with their donkey, but find that listening to everyone else's advice along the way doesn't always make for a smooth journey. This humorous fiction story is based on Aesop's fable The Farmer, His Son and the Donkey and is written by Simon Puttock.

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

* Children can recap the journey of Meg, Mum and the donkey at the market on pages 14-15.

* Text type: A retelling of a traditional tale

* Curriculum links: Citizenship: Animals and us

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 2013 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. Author: Simon Puttock wa born in New Zealand but now lives in Edinburgh. He is an established children's picture book writer and has worked with many publishers including Macmillan and OUP.