If Elephants Disappeared

by Lily Williams

Lily Williams explores what could happen if African forest elephants disappeared, tracing connections among elephants, seed dispersal, forest growth, and the wider environment. Through an imagined disappearance grounded in ecological relationships, the book helps young readers understand biodiversity and why protecting one species can matter far beyond that animal.

Big Idea

Living things are connected: losing forest elephants could change the forests they help shape and the many organisms that depend on those forests. Writers can make a complex system understandable by revealing its connections one step at a time.

Discussion Questions

1.How do forest elephants help their habitat simply by eating, moving, and leaving dung behind?
2.Which connection between elephants and other living things surprised you most, and why?
3.How does imagining a forest without elephants help us understand the forest we have now?
4.How do Williams's words and illustrations work together to explain changes that would be difficult to see all at once?
5.What could people do to protect forest elephants and their habitat, and what would we need to learn before choosing an action?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 50–60 minutes, including the read-aloud.📦 A copy of If Elephants Disappeared, paper or sentence strips, index cards, pencils, crayons or markers, tape or glue, and optional sticky notes.

Learning Goals

Explain at least one connection among forest elephants, seeds, and forest growth.
Identify how the book uses cause and effect to organize information.
Use words, pictures, and arrows to communicate a sequence of connected ecological changes.
Make purposeful pacing choices by deciding what to reveal on each panel.
Support an explanation with information from the read-aloud or illustrations.

Activity Steps

1.Read the book aloud, pausing to distinguish elephants' real ecological roles from the book's imagined disappearance scenario. Invite students to identify connections supported by the text and pictures.
2.Model a simple chain: an elephant eats fruit → seeds travel with the elephant → some seeds are deposited in dung → some seeds can grow in a new location. Explain that not every seed becomes a tree.
3.Have partners draw and label cards for the chain. Connect the cards with arrows and rehearse explanations using 'because,' 'so,' and 'could.'
4.Fold paper into a six-panel accordion book. Use the first panel to introduce forest elephants, the next four to reveal the ecological chain, and the last to propose a way people could help protect elephants or their habitat.
5.Ask students to choose one place to slow down with a detailed drawing and one place to move quickly with a short sentence. K–1 students may dictate captions; grades 2–5 can write connected explanations.
6.Share the books with partners. Partners identify one accurate connection and one effective page-turn choice; students revise any unclear or overly certain claims.

Standards Connections

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.K.7: With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the informational text in which they appear.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.3: Describe relationships among scientific ideas or concepts using language related to time, sequence, and cause/effect.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.2: Write informative/explanatory texts that introduce a topic, develop it with facts and definitions, and provide a concluding statement or section.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.3.1: Engage effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others' ideas and expressing one's own clearly. Select grade-level equivalents for other classes.

Printable Teacher’s Guide

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Grades K-5 Ready to print

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

In If Elephants Disappeared, Lily Williams makes ecological relationships readable by controlling the order in which readers encounter them. Forest elephants are the focal animals, but the larger subject is a network: feeding, movement, seeds, trees, and the environment are connected. The imagined disappearance gives readers a reason to keep asking what might change next. This is an especially useful mentor text for informational writing because its momentum comes from explanation rather than from a traditional protagonist's adventure. A Pace-Write-Read study asks students to notice how much information they receive before a pause or page turn. Read first for understanding, then revisit selected spreads to examine how words and pictures divide the explanatory work. Students can borrow this approach without copying the text: introduce one ecological connection, make it visible, and then reveal its consequence. Emphasize that scientific pacing must preserve accuracy; an exciting sequence should not imply that every seed sprouts or that every possible consequence happens immediately.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Track how the explanation moves from forest elephants toward wider ecological consequences. Ask where students need an extra pause to understand a connection before moving on.
Plot	Treat the imagined disappearance and its consequences as an explanatory throughline, not a conventional fictional plot. Map the sequence as 'What changes, and what might that change affect next?'
Prosody	Read explanatory passages clearly and give important cause-and-effect relationships room to register. Compare a rushed reading with one that pauses between a cause and its consequence.
Word	Collect words from the book that name organisms, habitats, and ecological actions. Discuss why precise verbs describing eating, moving, or growing explain more than a vague phrase such as 'helps nature.'
Concept	Center the concept of interdependence: an elephant's ordinary activities can affect other living things. Have students explain one connection before attempting the whole network.
Voice & Worldview	Discuss how the explanatory voice invites readers to care about an animal by understanding its ecological importance. Ask what the book suggests about the value of species that people may never see in person.
Point of View	Notice that the information comes through an explanatory narrator rather than an elephant telling its own story. Compare this approach with an invented first-person elephant caption, clearly labeling the caption as student-created fiction.
Setting & Place	Locate the African forest habitat discussed in the book and distinguish it from the open grasslands children may associate with elephants. Explain how habitat shapes the relationships the book explores.
Original Characters	Forest elephants are the focal animals, not necessarily individually named fictional characters. Let students create an elephant guide for their own books while keeping its ecological behavior factual.
Dialogue	Do not assume that dialogue drives this informational book; look at how explanation carries the reader instead. Students can rehearse a partner conversation about seed dispersal, then convert it into concise factual captions.
Details	Focus on details that explain a mechanism, such as seeds traveling after elephants eat fruit. Ask students which details are necessary to understand the connection and which would merely decorate their writing.
Descriptions	Compare what the words explain with what the illustrations show about elephants and forest life. Have students add a descriptive phrase only when it helps readers picture or understand the process.
Firsts	Examine the opening to identify what readers learn first and why that information matters later. Challenge students to introduce an elephant's ecological role before asking readers to imagine its absence.
Immediacy & Engagement	The possibility of disappearance turns an ecological explanation into a meaningful question. Ask students which image or idea first made the issue feel important to them.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Distinguish illustrations of particular ecological moments from statements that summarize broader processes. Show how a close-up of a seed's journey can make a large-scale explanation easier to follow.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Explore how concern builds as readers discover that losing elephants could affect more than elephants alone. Invite students to identify a surprising connection without exaggerating the scientific claim.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Discuss the imagined elephant-free future as a conditional look ahead, not a prediction with a fixed timeline. Students can end a panel with an unresolved consequence without claiming that the book uses a conventional fictional cliffhanger.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Because this is a picture book, study page turns rather than assuming chapter breaks. Before turning a selected page, ask what information students expect or need next.
Pace & Creativity	Invite students to present the same elephant–seed connection as either one overview panel or three close-up panels. Compare how the amount of space changes the reader's attention and speed.
Play	Use paper seeds and an elephant cutout to act out seed movement across a paper forest. Keep the play connected to the book's explanation rather than treating the model as a complete ecosystem.
Performance	Have small groups perform a narrated sequence of eating fruit, moving, depositing seeds, and possible germination. Insert a pause after each action so classmates can explain its significance.
Personality	Discuss how illustrations can make elephants engaging without requiring invented human thoughts. Students can give their own narrator a curious or caring personality while keeping facts separate from imagination.
Humor	Seed dispersal through dung may prompt laughter; use that response as an entry into serious scientific observation. Do not require students to find jokes or comic scenes where the book does not provide them.
Pause	Pause after an important connection and ask students to explain it in their own words. In student books, a detailed picture can create a useful thinking pause before the next consequence.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Listen for any memorable sound patterns or figurative language in the actual text rather than assuming it rhymes. As an extension, students can write a short poetic line about a seed's journey and pair it with a precise scientific explanation.
Repetition	Track recurring ideas about disappearance and connected consequences, checking the text before identifying any repeated wording. Students can repeat a sentence frame in their own writing to help readers follow a chain.
Rhythm	Notice how sentence lengths and pauses affect the read-aloud. Let students alternate a short statement about elephants with a longer sentence explaining an ecological connection.
Punctuation	Examine punctuation on a selected spread and read it aloud as marked. Compare how a full stop allows a scientific idea to settle before the next idea begins.
Questions	Use the title's conditional idea to generate questions such as 'What might change if elephants were gone?' Separate questions the book answers from those that require additional research.
Compare-Contrast	Compare a forest with elephants carrying out their ecological roles with the possible changes described in their absence. Require students to ground contrasts in the book rather than inventing a completely lifeless forest.
Objects	Follow a concrete item—a fruit or seed—to make the larger ecological explanation manageable. Students can use a seed drawing as a visual link across their accordion-book panels.
Threes	As a teaching scaffold, condense one connection into three beats: fruit is eaten, seeds travel, and some seeds may grow. Explain that this is a classroom organizing choice, not a claim that the book consistently uses groups of three.
Lists	List the living things and processes connected to elephants, then discuss why a list alone does not explain their relationships. Turn selected list items into sentences joined by cause-and-effect language.
White Space & Negative Space	Inspect a spread for open areas around text or illustrations and discuss where the eye rests. Compare it with a more visually crowded spread, describing the layout actually present in your copy.
Art & Graphics	Study how illustrations make forest relationships visible alongside the words. Ask students to identify a detail in the art that strengthens their understanding of an ecological process.
Interactives & Gamification	Create a classroom card-matching game linking elephants, fruit, seeds, dung, and new plants. This is an extension of the book, not a claim that it contains built-in games; require an explanation for every match.
Placement	Notice where text sits relative to the elephant, forest, or other pictured information on a selected spread. Students should place captions beside the action they explain so readers do not have to guess the connection.
Form	Discuss how the informational picture-book form combines brief text, images, and an imagined scenario. Compare that experience with receiving the same information as an unillustrated fact list.
Dummy	Define a dummy as a rough model of a book and have students sketch one idea per panel before drafting. Check that the sequence makes the elephant–seed–forest relationship understandable before adding finished art.
Passion	Discuss how careful explanation can communicate concern for elephants without relying only on emotional appeals. Ask students to end their work with an informed, achievable conservation message rather than a promise that one simple action will solve everything.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute task: A Seed's Journey. Minutes 0–3: Revisit a passage or spread explaining forest elephants' role in seed dispersal; identify the factual connection students will communicate. Minutes 3–6: Fold a sheet into four panels and sketch this sequence: an elephant eats fruit; seeds travel with the elephant; seeds are deposited in dung; some seeds may germinate and grow. Minutes 6–12: Add captions or dictated labels, using 'because,' 'so,' or 'could' where appropriate; make the first two panels quick to read and the seed-deposit panel a slower, detailed close-up. Minutes 12–16: Partner-read the mini-books, pausing before the last panel so listeners can predict the next connection. Minutes 16–20: Revise one caption or drawing for scientific clarity and one for pacing, then share how the seed's journey helps explain why forest elephants matter. For K–1, provide picture cards and accept oral narration; for grades 2–5, require connected captions and a note that germination and tree growth take time.

Classroom Activities

One Elephant, Many Connections

Students build an illustrated cause-and-effect chain showing how forest elephants help disperse seeds and support forest life. They then turn their chain into a short accordion book, using page turns to reveal each connection and a final panel to suggest a conservation action. Although the book uses an imagined scenario, teach it as informational science writing rather than as a conventional fictional animal adventure.

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