What Do You Do When Something Wants To Eat You?

Title: What Do You Do When Something Wants To Eat You?
Author and Illustrator: Steve Jenkins
Publisher and date of Publication: Houghton Mifflin, 1997
Genre: Informative Text, Picture Book
Age Range: K-3rd Grade

Summary: This book shows unusual animals and how they defend themselves. The illustrations are wonderful and you feel like you are there, with the animal shown. The right side of the page shows the animal and names it and when you turn the page, it shows and tells you how they defend themselves. At the end, it asks the reader, "what would you do if something wanted to eat you?"

Response: This book was interesting. I think young children would love to see
the unusual animals because I'm sure most children have never even heard of some
of those animals in the book, because I haven't. Children will be entertained while learning a lof of interesting facts. Most children are used to the common animals and the common ways to defend themselves but the animals in here run across water, blows up like a prickly ball, and a snake's tail breaks off if something in biting it. This would be a good book to incorporate into science class or a science fair. The pictures are wonderful and because they use the whole page, it makes you feel as if you are right there with it. Young children would enjoy the illustrations and older children would learn interesting facts.

Teaching Ideas: As I said before, this book would be good to use during science class. Children could pick an animal and draw/tell how the defend themselves. Also, they could pretend they are being eaten, and how they would defend themselves. Children could play the book out and pretend they are the animals in the book and pretend to eat each other.