What If...?

Title: What If?
Author: Laura Vaccaro Seeger
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Date of Publication: 2010
Illustrator: Laura Vaccaro Seeger
Genre Designation: Children’s Picture Book
Readability Lexile: Pre-K-1 (ages 4-7)

Summary:
What if...? is a story about a beach ball and 3 seals.  The story starts with the reader seeing a picture of a boy kicking a beach ball out to the ocean, it ends up drifting out to two seals who begin playing with it.  After sometime though the ball ends up back on land, which leads one of the seals to the land as well.  This is when the seal comes upon another seal, and we are asked our first what if question.  The new sea lion plays with the new one and leaves out the original sea lion in the ocean.  The story progresses and we see only the word “or” this is when we see a picture of the original sea lions playing together again, and the sea lion on the land being left out.  Our third and final what if question is when all three play together. 

Evaluation:
When I first looked through this book I thought for sure I was not going to “like” it.  However, I could not have been more wrong.  It is definitely one of those books that you must understand before trying to use within the classroom.  The author did a great job of using allegory.  This story has a literal meaning which could be that the seals all wanted to play with the ball.  It also had a symbolic meaning of how sometimes it is hard to include all of our friends without hurting feelings.  The illustrations within the book are great and really tell the story.  There is such minimal use of text within the story, that it really allows the reader to imagine for themselves how the seals are feeling.  The author did a nice job of bringing a real life “problem” to the fantasy world.  By allowing the reader to relate to the seals and tell the story with their own words, they may be able to make personal connections a little bit easier.  I loved how the author allowed the reader to see multiple choices through the story.  We saw how the seals playing together were feeling, but we also saw how the left out seals felt as well.  I think that this story allows for a great discussion about problem solving skills, group play, other friends feelings, and so much more.

Illustrations:
The illustrations are very nice in this story.  They are a nice balance between vague enough to allow the reader to make their own assumptions and conclusions, while providing enough information were it is not a complete question as to what is going on. 

Mini-Lesson:
This mini-lesson would focus on analogies.  Students would make “masks” to compare how they would have felt if they would have felt if they were playing and they were in a situation like the seals.  The students will then tell about a time they felt like the seal.  We will use construction paper to make 3 masks (1 for each of the 3 situations mentioned in the book) then the students can glue their mask to a popsicle stick.  Student Example: “One time my sister and cousin didn’t let me swim with them.” The student would then hold up their mad, sad or whatever feeling mask they made for that situation to show how they felt.