Build your child's reading confidence at home with books at the right level During the First World War, the British War Dog School was set up. Find out how it trained dogs to carry messages along the trenches, helping the war effort and saving lives. Sapphire/Band 16 books offer longer reads to develop children's sustained engagement with texts and are more complex syntactically. Text type - An information book. The book is organised into short chapters to help children practise the skills of locating and identifying important information. The glossary and index can be used to develop children's information retrieval skills further. Curriculum links - History