A systematic soft cover reading scheme book with coloured, detailed and comical illustrations on all 99 pages. The book begins with single words presented on a blank page with a colourful illustration for the child to read out loud. The single words gradually develop into short simple sentences made up entirely from target words for the child to read out loud alone. Interleaved with the simple sentence pages, is a story about the adventures of the main characters as they travel around Malta. These story pages are designed to be read out by the adult to the point where a new target word needs to be learned. These pages of story gradually include the learned target words which are printed in bold for the adult to pause at, for the child to read out aloud so that paired reading takes place. The first time a target word appears on the simple sentence pages or the adult read story it will be printed at the bottom of the page. The book is intended to be used with the free Memory/flash cards which can be downloaded from Marco the Malta Bus website. According to research, 16 words included in this first reading book make up 25% of all the words in a typical book.