Collins Big Cat - The King of Arcabuco: Band 16/Sapphire

“Roll double six or double three, let’s learn about your history.”

Join Aniyah, EJ and Olivia, the time-travelling trio, as they play their Ludi board game and are transported to another action-packed adventure back in time, helping real people from history and solving exciting mysteries along the way.

EJ, Aniyah and Olivia have been transported back in time! It’s 1601 and they’re lost in a dense South American jungle, where they meet a group of escaped Maroons, and their leader, Benkos. Will the trio be able to use secret call signs and hidden maps to help their new friends find freedom?

This exciting book is one of several action-packed adventure stories from Black history, written and illustrated by Nadine Cowan.

Sapphire/Band 16 books offer longer reads to develop children's sustained engagement with texts and are more complex syntactically.

Pages 54 and 55 allow children to re-visit the content of the book, supporting comprehension skills, vocabulary development and recall.

Ideas for reading in the back of the book provide practical support and stimulating activities.

Collins Big Cat supports every primary child on their reading journey from phonics to fluency. Top authors and illustrators have created fiction and non-fiction books that children love to read. Book banded for guided and independent reading, there are reading notes in the back, comprehensive teaching and assessment support and ebooks available.

Collins Big Cat is a whole-school reading programme that provides complete support for primary reading. Children will become fluent readers through hundreds of high-quality fiction and non-fiction banded books by award-winning authors and illustrators. In-depth teaching resources support you in developing and assessing key reading skills at all stages from early reading through to phonics, to guided, whole-class and independent reading for more confident readers.