What If?

Title: What If?  
Author: Laura Vaccaro Seeger   
Illustrator: Laura Vaccaro Seeger  
Publisher: Roaring Book Press
Publication Date: 2010   
Genre/Format: Fiction/Wordless Picture Book   
Summary: A story told mostly through the pictures on the page about friendship amongst seals.   
What I Think: I love the imagination of this story even with the small amount of words.  I like the idea of thinking about seals playing together on the beach. I have seen some wordless picture books that are complex and hard to figure out, but this one is simple.  I'm excited to talk to students about the pictures and the story they tell.  I think this would be a great book to use to generate some dialogue between the seal characters.  This book can definitely be used with students who don't speak English or who speak limited English because there are few words.  I'm going to be using this with my English Language Learners to help them practice writing in English.
Read Together: Pre-K - 12
Read Alone: Pre-K - 12 
Read With: Other wordless picture books like Good Night, Gorilla By Peggy Rathman
Snatch of Text: "What if...?  And what if...?  Then what if...?  But then...  Or..." 
Reading Strategies to Practice: Activating Background Knowledge, Making Connections, Making Inferences 
Writing Strategies to Practice: Writing Dialogue, Personal Narrative
Writing Prompts: Write your own text for What If? including dialogue as the seals talk back and forth. Write about a time in your life when someone included you in a game or other experience or when you made an effort to include someone else in what you were doing.
Topics Covered: Friendship, Loneliness, Accepting Others  
Translated to Spanish: No, but could easily be read and discussed in Spanish because there are few words!