Collins Big Cat - Counting Stars: Katharine Johnson Biog: Band 16/Sapphire

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.

This is the remarkable story of Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who worked for the American Space Agency. She was part of the team that helped Neil Armstrong land on the Moon for the very first time. She was an African American woman and had to fight against racism and sexism to do the job that she loved and was exceptionally good at.

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

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

Ros Asquith is well-known to Guardian readers for her strip cartoon Doris, which ran for over ten years. She is also the succesful author of children’s books, notably the Letty Chubb Teenage Worrier series for teenagers published by Piccadilly and Puffin. She lives in North London with her husband - a jazz critic - and two teenage sons.