If Sharks Disappeared

by Lily Williams

Lily Williams’s informational picture book uses a hypothetical disappearance to explore sharks’ importance to ocean ecosystems. Through accessible explanations and illustrations, it traces how losing these predators could disrupt marine food webs and affect life beyond the ocean, inviting readers to care about shark conservation.

Big Idea

Sharks are important participants in interconnected ecosystems, not simply frightening ocean animals. A change affecting one group of organisms can ripple through a food web, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Discussion Questions

1.How do the words and illustrations challenge ideas people might already have about sharks?
2.Why might removing a predator cause problems for animals it does not directly eat?
3.Which connection in the book’s chain of consequences surprised you most, and how would you explain it to someone else?
4.Why do you think Williams asks readers to imagine sharks disappearing rather than only presenting facts about sharks?
5.What could people do to help protect sharks, and what would we need to learn before choosing an action?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 A copy of If Sharks Disappeared, paper or index cards, pencils, crayons or markers, yarn, tape, and chart paper; optional sticky notes

Learning Goals

Explain sharks’ roles as predators in ocean food webs using evidence from the book.
Model how a change to one population can affect other organisms in an ecosystem.
Create an illustrated cause-and-effect sequence with clear connections between events.
Use page turns, sentence length, and pauses to control how readers encounter information.
Distinguish a scientifically supported prediction from an unsupported guess.

Activity Steps

1.Read and notice, 10 minutes: Read the book aloud, stopping at selected spreads to identify sharks’ relationships with other organisms. Clarify that the book is informational nonfiction built around a hypothetical situation, rather than a fictional adventure.
2.Build the model, 8 minutes: Make cards for sharks and several organisms connected in a food-web example supported by the book. Connect cards with yarn, using arrows from food to consumer and explaining that the model shows only some ecosystem relationships.
3.Investigate a change, 7 minutes: Remove the shark card without pulling the entire model apart. Trace one connection at a time and discuss which populations might change, emphasizing that effects depend on the species and ecosystem.
4.Plan the pages, 5 minutes: Have pairs choose a supported consequence chain and sketch four panels: an ocean with sharks, sharks disappearing, a resulting ecosystem change, and why that change matters.
5.Write and illustrate, 10 minutes: Fold paper into accordion books. Add drawings and brief captions, using a page turn to separate the disappearance from its consequences; encourage words such as “could” or “might” where appropriate.
6.Read and reflect, 5 minutes: Partners read their books aloud, pause at page turns, and explain one scientific connection and one pacing choice. Revise any caption that suggests every ocean ecosystem would respond identically.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RI.K.3 — With prompting and support, describe connections between individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text; apply to the book’s ecosystem connections.
ELA: CCSS RI.3.3 — Describe relationships among scientific ideas or concepts using language related to time, sequence, and cause/effect.
ELA: CCSS W.3.2 — Write informative/explanatory texts that examine a topic and convey ideas clearly; apply through illustrated explanatory captions.
Science: NGSS 5-LS2-1 — Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment. The food-web activity supports this expectation when expanded to include producers, decomposers, and matter movement.
Science and Engineering Practice, K–5: Developing and Using Models — Construct, discuss, and revise a simplified model of ecosystem relationships. Select the grade-specific expectations appropriate to the class.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

If Sharks Disappeared shows how informational writing can move readers through an unfolding sequence rather than deliver disconnected facts. Although the supplied category labels it fiction, the book is best taught as informational nonfiction using a hypothetical premise. Williams makes an ecological question compelling by helping readers understand sharks, imagine their absence, and follow widening consequences. The organisms and their relationships—not an invented hero and villain—drive the progression. In a Pace-Write-Read study, examine how much information readers receive at once. Read selected spreads aloud, allow time to inspect the illustrations, and notice how a page turn separates an idea from its consequence. Students can borrow this approach for their own science writing: establish a relationship, introduce a change, and reveal the effects in manageable steps. Throughout the workshop, distinguish the author’s actual techniques from devices students might experiment with; not every craft element below is a prominent feature of this book.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Notice how the explanation moves from sharks to increasingly broad ecological consequences. Ask students where they need a slower rereading to understand a connection rather than simply turning the page.
2. Plot	Treat the progression as an explanatory sequence rather than a conventional fictional plot: an established ecosystem faces a hypothetical disruption, followed by consequences. Map that sequence with “because,” “so,” and “could.”
3. Prosody	Read factual explanations with clear phrasing, then give the disappearance scenario a thoughtful, wondering tone. Let vocal emphasis clarify cause and effect without making every shark reference sound frightening.
4. Word	Choose a shark- or ecosystem-related word from the text and examine how the nearby illustration supports its meaning. Compare the precision of the author’s word with a vague substitute such as “thing” or “animal.”
5. Concept	The central concept is ecological interdependence: losing sharks can affect more than their immediate prey. Have students explain this idea through one specific connection before attempting the whole chain.
6. Voice & Worldview	Discuss how the explanatory voice encourages curiosity and concern rather than treating sharks as monsters. Ask how this perspective influences what readers notice about these predators.
7. Point of View	Identify the explanatory narrator rather than assigning the story to a shark character. As an extension, students can describe one connection from an organism’s imagined viewpoint, clearly labeling that piece as creative writing.
8. Setting & Place	Track how the ocean setting is presented as a network of relationships rather than merely a backdrop. Ask students how the book expands their sense of where the effects of ocean changes might be felt.
9. Original Characters	Sharks and other organisms function as subjects in a scientific explanation, not as a cast of named fictional protagonists. Discuss how an author makes real animals interesting without inventing human motives for them.
10. Dialogue	Dialogue is not the main engine of this explanation; narration and pictures carry the ideas. Students can test an invented conversation between two organisms, then decide whether it clarifies or distracts from the science.
11. Details	Find details about sharks and their ecological relationships that help explain why their disappearance matters. Separate information needed to understand a consequence from information that mainly adds interest.
12. Descriptions	Compare what the prose explains with what the illustrations show about ocean life. Ask students to write a precise description that adds useful information rather than merely repeating the picture.
13. Firsts	Examine the first spread and identify what readers learn before imagining an ocean without sharks. Discuss why readers need an initial understanding of sharks before they can understand the stakes of losing them.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	The disappearance premise makes an enormous environmental issue easier to enter through one concrete question. Invite students to name the moment when their curiosity shifted from “What are sharks like?” to “What happens without them?”
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Notice how illustrations present particular ocean views while the prose explains patterns across populations and ecosystems. Chart the larger structure as introduction, hypothetical change, linked consequences, and conservation significance.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	The tension comes from discovering how far the effects of losing sharks could extend. Before revealing a consequence, ask for predictions and then compare them with the book’s explanation.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	The hypothetical disappearance invites readers to consider a possible future, but it should not automatically be labeled a conventional fictional flash-forward. Distinguish background information about sharks from the imagined consequences of their absence.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	This picture book uses spreads and page turns rather than chapters to organize reading. Select a turn between connected ideas and discuss how it gives readers time to predict or absorb a consequence.
19. Pace & Creativity	Williams turns a large scientific topic into a sequence readers can follow. Have students explain the same ecosystem connection in one crowded panel and then across three panels, comparing clarity and momentum.
20. Play	Use movable organism cards to let students play with the book’s ecological relationships. Require each proposed connection to have an explanation, so playful exploration does not become random food-web guessing.
21. Performance	Assign students to hold organism cards while a narrator explains one relationship from the book. Pause after the shark card is removed so the audience can trace a possible effect before the explanation continues.
22. Personality	Discuss how the author’s care for sharks gives the explanation a recognizable attitude without requiring a fictional shark personality. Invite students to sound interested and informed in their own captions.
23. Humor	Ask whether any visual moments feel playful, while recognizing that humor is not the book’s primary organizing device. Discuss when a joke might invite interest and when it might obscure the seriousness of ecosystem disruption.
24. Pause	Pause after a significant ecological connection and let students silently trace it in the illustration. Teach that a pause can support understanding, not just create dramatic suspense.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Listen for sound patterns or evocative phrasing in a selected passage without assuming the book is written in verse. Students can try a brief ripple metaphor, then explain where that comparison helps—and where a literal explanation is still needed.
26. Repetition	Track recurring ideas about disappearance, connection, and consequences rather than assuming an identical refrain appears on every page. Students can repeat a sentence frame in their own books to make the causal structure easier to follow.
27. Rhythm	Read a selected passage aloud and notice how phrases divide information into understandable units. Students can test whether a short consequence sentence followed by a longer explanation gives their writing a useful rhythm.
28. Punctuation	Inspect the punctuation in an actual passage and use it to guide phrasing and pauses. Compare how a period and a comma affect the delivery of students’ own cause-and-effect captions.
29. Questions	The title establishes a hypothetical condition that invites the question, “What would happen?” Have students generate questions while reading and distinguish those answered by the book from those requiring further research.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare an ecosystem with sharks to the possible ecosystem changes described after their disappearance. Emphasize relationships and population balance rather than a simple “sharks good, other animals bad” contrast.
31. Objects	Choose a visible organism or environmental feature in a spread and explain its contribution to the ecological explanation. In student drawings, include objects because they convey a relationship, not merely to decorate an ocean scene.
32. Threes	As a workshop adaptation, organize one supported chain into three beats: a predator disappears, a connected population changes, and another part of the ecosystem is affected. Do not present this teaching scaffold as a repeated three-part pattern unless students can locate one in the book.
33. Lists	Compare a student-generated list of shark facts with the book’s connected explanation of why sharks matter. Discuss how lists gather information, while causal sentences explain relationships.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Examine areas around text and illustrated forms on a chosen spread. Ask how open and crowded areas guide attention, and remind students that visual emptiness alone is not evidence of a scientific change.
35. Art & Graphics	Read the illustrations as sources of information about organisms, scale, and relationships alongside the prose. Have students identify which part of an explanation comes from words, which from pictures, and which requires both.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Add a classroom prediction game at selected page turns; this is a teaching extension, not a claim that the book contains game features. Reward evidence-based explanations and thoughtful revisions rather than the most dramatic prediction.
37. Placement	Study where text sits relative to the organisms it helps explain on a selected spread. Students can move a caption around their own page and ask a partner which arrangement makes the connection clearest.
38. Form	Discuss how an illustrated nonfiction picture book makes an ecosystem argument accessible through both language and images. Compare this form with a fact sheet: what can a sequence of spreads help readers experience?
39. Dummy	Create a small folded-paper dummy, or rough picture-book prototype, for a shark-related consequence chain. Test whether each page adds a necessary idea and whether the reader has enough information before each turn.
40. Passion	Discuss how choosing to explain sharks’ ecological importance communicates concern for an often-feared animal. Ask students to pair their own environmental enthusiasm with accurate information and a realistic conservation message.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task — “Turn the Page, Follow the Ripple.” Minutes 0–3: Revisit a spread that explains a shark-related ecological connection and briefly trace its cause and effect. Minutes 3–6: Model a four-page paper dummy: page 1 establishes one feeding relationship supported by the book; page 2 introduces sharks disappearing; page 3 reveals a possible resulting population change; page 4 explains a further supported effect or why that change matters. Minutes 6–13: Students draw and write their own version, giving each page one main idea and placing the disappearance just before a page turn. K–1 students may dictate labels or captions; grades 2–5 write connected sentences and use “could” or “might” where outcomes are conditional. Minutes 13–17: Partners read aloud, pause before the consequence, and explain whether the page turn helps them anticipate and understand it. Minutes 17–20: Students revise one unclear connection or crowded page, then share one pacing choice and the evidence supporting their science.

Classroom Activities

One Missing Shark, Many Ripples

Students build a simplified ocean food-web model with organism cards and yarn, then investigate what could happen when sharks are removed. They turn one supported chain of consequences into a short illustrated accordion book, using page turns to reveal changes one at a time. Younger students draw and dictate; older students write captions that distinguish direct effects from possible indirect effects.