If Polar Bears Disappeared

by Lily Williams

Lily Williams’s If Polar Bears Disappeared is an informational picture book that uses a hypothetical disappearance to explore polar bears’ place in the Arctic food web. Through accessible explanations and illustrations, it connects shrinking sea ice, polar bears’ survival, and changes that can ripple through an ecosystem. Although listed here as fiction, the book is best taught as science-based informational writing built around a “what if” question.

Big Idea

Living things are interconnected: changes affecting one species can affect an entire ecosystem. Writers can make those connections understandable by carefully pacing explanations, illustrations, and cause-and-effect sequences.

Discussion Questions

1.How does sea ice help polar bears survive, and what might change when that ice shrinks?
2.Why might the disappearance of one animal matter to living things that do not interact with it directly?
3.How do Williams’s words and illustrations help us understand changes that would be difficult to see all at once?
4.Why do you think the author explores what could happen instead of only listing facts about polar bears?
5.What questions does this book leave you with, and how could we investigate them or use what we learn to care for ecosystems?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 A copy of If Polar Bears Disappeared, chart paper, index cards or scrap paper, yarn or drawn arrows, folded paper, pencils, crayons or markers, and sticky notes.

Learning Goals

Explain how polar bears depend on sea ice to reach important food sources, including seals.
Use information from the book’s words and illustrations to describe connections among organisms and their environment.
Distinguish a scientifically supported connection from a prediction that needs further investigation.
Create a sequenced illustrated explanation using cause-and-effect language and purposeful pauses.
Participate in a collaborative discussion and revise an explanation after receiving feedback.

Activity Steps

1.Read and notice, 10 minutes: Read the book aloud, pausing to identify the Arctic setting, polar bears’ needs, and the author’s central hypothetical question. Explain that the disappearance is a possibility the author asks readers to consider, not a report that polar bears have already disappeared.
2.Build a connection web, 8 minutes: Create cards for sea ice, polar bears, seals, and additional organisms shown in the book. Connect cards with labeled arrows such as “provides a hunting platform” or “is eaten by”; verify each connection using the book rather than connecting everything automatically.
3.Trace a change, 5 minutes: Ask what shrinking sea ice could mean for polar bears’ access to seals. Trace one supported pathway and distinguish what the book explains from students’ additional predictions.
4.Pace-write a mini-book, 12 minutes: Fold paper into four panels: Arctic conditions, a change in sea ice, an effect on polar bears, and a wider connection or concluding question. Use “because,” “when,” or “as a result”; K–2 students may draw and dictate, while grades 3–5 add explanatory captions and evidence.
5.Read, revise, and reflect, 10 minutes: Partners read their mini-books aloud, pausing at panel boundaries. Each partner identifies one clear connection and one place needing more explanation; students revise and finish by naming one ecosystem connection they understand better.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RI.K.3, RI.1.3, and RI.2.3 — Describe connections among individuals, events, ideas, or scientific concepts in informational texts, with grade-appropriate support.
ELA: CCSS RI.3.3 and RI.5.3 — Explain relationships among scientific ideas or concepts, including cause and effect, using text information.
ELA: CCSS W.K.2–W.5.2 — Create grade-appropriate informative or explanatory writing using drawings, dictation, facts, and organized explanations.
Science: NGSS K-LS1-1 — Use observations to describe patterns in what plants and animals need to survive; the lesson supports this through discussion of polar bears’ needs.
Science: NGSS 3-LS4-4 — Make a claim about a solution to a problem caused by environmental change; extend the lesson with evidence-based discussion of ways to reduce threats to Arctic habitats.

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

In If Polar Bears Disappeared, Lily Williams makes a large ecological idea approachable by organizing information around a focused hypothetical question. Rather than asking readers to absorb an entire ecosystem at once, the book connects the Arctic environment, polar bears’ needs, and the consequences of change. Its forward movement comes from explanation: readers keep asking what another change might mean. This makes it useful for studying pacing in informational writing, not just in fictional adventures. During a Pace-Write-Read study, invite students to notice how words and pictures share the work. Read a spread, examine its illustration, and ask whether readers need to move forward or stop to understand a connection. Then have students apply that decision to their own explanatory mini-books: introduce one idea, show a change, explain its effect, and give the reader time to think. Younger students can compose through drawing and oral rehearsal; older students can refine transitions, qualify predictions, and check scientific accuracy.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Track how the explanation moves from polar bears and their habitat toward wider ecological consequences. Ask where a reader needs a slower rereading to understand a connection.
Plot	Treat the organizing sequence as an informational progression rather than a fictional adventure: existing conditions, environmental change, and possible consequences. Students can map that progression with arrows.
Prosody	Read the explanatory passages with clear phrasing and a thoughtful tone, leaving time to examine the art. Compare a rushed reading with one that makes cause-and-effect relationships audible.
Word	Collect important words associated with polar bears, sea ice, habitat, and feeding relationships. Have students explain how precise scientific vocabulary helps readers follow the explanation.
Concept	Keep returning to interdependence: a polar bear is part of a system, not an isolated animal. Ask students to express that concept through one labeled connection.
Voice & Worldview	Discuss how an accessible explanatory voice invites readers to care about the Arctic. Ask how the book presents the value of an animal that many readers will never see in the wild.
Point of View	Distinguish the explanatory narrator from an imagined polar bear narrator. Rewrite one fact from a bear’s perspective, then discuss what must remain scientifically accurate.
Setting & Place	Study the Arctic as a working habitat rather than merely a snowy background. Identify how sea ice influences what polar bears can do and where they can find food.
Original Characters	Polar bears and other organisms are real species, not invented story characters. Discuss how an author can make readers care about an animal without giving it a name or imaginary dialogue.
Dialogue	Notice that explanation, rather than character conversation, carries the book’s ideas. As an extension, students can invent a question-and-answer exchange, clearly labeling it as their own writing.
Details	Find details that explain why sea ice matters to polar bears. Ask students to choose a detail that strengthens a scientific explanation rather than simply decorating it.
Descriptions	Compare what the text explains about the Arctic with what the illustrations allow readers to observe. Have students write a descriptive caption that adds useful information without repeating everything in the picture.
Firsts	Examine the opening and identify the first idea readers must understand before considering disappearance. Students should introduce that necessary background before presenting a consequence in their own writing.
Immediacy & Engagement	The title’s hypothetical situation gives readers a reason to investigate. Invite students to name the question they most want answered before beginning the read-aloud.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Distinguish illustrated moments of animal life from passages that summarize larger ecological processes. Discuss why an informational picture book may need both close observation and broad explanation.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Locate the uncertainty created by asking what would happen without polar bears. Explore how discovering wider connections can create surprise without a fictional villain or chase.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Treat the disappearance scenario as a hypothetical projection, not a report of a completed event. Use the title to discuss anticipation without assuming the book contains conventional flashbacks or cliffhangers.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Because this is a picture book, study spread boundaries rather than expecting chapters. Before turning a page, ask what information readers already have and what they need next.
Pace & Creativity	Have students explain the sea-ice connection in two ways: a single crowded panel and several sequenced panels. Compare which version gives readers enough time to understand.
Play	Use movable organism cards to play with the order of an explanation. Require students to justify each connection so that experimentation does not turn into unsupported ecological claims.
Performance	Invite partners to perform a short explanation with one student narrating and the other pointing to relevant illustration details. Practice pausing when the audience needs to inspect the image.
Personality	Discuss how illustration and subject selection can make polar bears memorable without portraying them as people. Students can show an animal’s observable behavior instead of inventing human motives.
Humor	Do not assume humor is the book’s main strategy; ask students whether any visual detail feels playful. Discuss how a light touch can invite attention without making habitat loss seem unimportant.
Pause	Pause after an important ecological connection and ask students to restate it in their own words. Explain that readers sometimes need thinking time more than additional information.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Listen for sound patterns or vivid phrasing in the actual text without assuming it is written in verse. Students may create a brief poetic line about sea ice, then pair it with a precise factual caption.
Repetition	Track recurring references to polar bears, sea ice, and connected changes. Discuss how returning to key ideas can orient readers as the explanation grows more complex.
Rhythm	Listen to how sentence length and phrasing affect the read-aloud. Have students alternate a short statement of change with a longer explanation of its significance.
Punctuation	Choose an actual sentence from the book and practice honoring its punctuation aloud. Ask how a full stop gives readers time to absorb a scientific idea before moving on.
Questions	Use the title’s implied “what if” question as the central inquiry. Separate questions answered by the book from those requiring another reliable source.
Compare-Contrast	Compare conditions that allow polar bears to hunt on sea ice with conditions in which less ice is available. Keep the comparison focused on habitat and access to food rather than a simplistic happy-versus-sad contrast.
Objects	Focus on sea ice as a physical feature with an ecological function, not merely scenery. Ask students to draw and label what it enables polar bears to do.
Threes	As a writing exercise, organize three linked ideas: sea ice, access to seals, and polar bear survival. Present this as a student-created structure, not a claim that the book consistently uses groups of three.
Lists	List organisms students can identify in the book, then transform the list into labeled relationships. Discuss why naming many animals does not, by itself, explain an ecosystem.
White Space & Negative Space	Examine how open areas around text and images affect where students look and how long they linger. Invite students to leave breathing room around the most important connection in their own panels.
Art & Graphics	Read the illustrations as information about habitat, scale, and relationships. Ask what a picture helps explain and what still requires words or further evidence.
Interactives & Gamification	Create a classroom “trace the connection” challenge using organism and habitat cards. This is a teaching extension, not a claim that the published book contains interactive game features.
Placement	Notice how the position of text relative to an animal or habitat feature guides attention. Students can place captions near the relevant drawing to reduce confusion.
Form	Discuss how an informational picture book combines visual explanation with a hypothetical organizing question. Compare this form with a field-guide entry that describes polar bears without exploring disappearance.
Dummy	Make a small folded-paper book mock-up before producing finished artwork. Use its page turns to test whether the Arctic background, environmental change, and consequences arrive in a clear order.
Passion	Ask how Williams’s choice to focus on polar bears encourages attention to ecological connections. Invite students to end with a genuine question or evidence-based action rather than an exaggerated promise to fix the Arctic alone.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task — “Pause for the Polar Bear.” Minutes 0–3: Revisit a spread explaining polar bears’ relationship to sea ice; identify one supported connection and observe how words and art share the explanation. Minutes 3–5: Orally rehearse four beats: polar bears use sea ice to hunt seals; less sea ice can make hunting harder; difficulty getting food can threaten survival; polar bears are connected to a wider Arctic ecosystem. Minutes 5–12: Fold a sheet into four panels and draw or write one beat per panel, using the book to check accuracy. K–2 students may dictate captions; grades 3–5 should use a cause-and-effect transition and explain why a prediction may need the word “could.” Minutes 12–16: Partners read the panels aloud, deliberately pausing between them; the listener identifies any missing connection. Minutes 16–19: Revise one caption or panel boundary to improve clarity and pacing. Minute 19–20: Share an exit statement: “I slowed my reader down at ___ so they could understand ___.”

Classroom Activities

One Change, Many Ripples

Students build a labeled Arctic connection web, then turn one pathway through it into a four-panel cause-and-effect mini-book. By choosing where to pause, explain, and turn a page, they practice pacing while showing how shrinking sea ice can affect polar bears and other parts of their ecosystem.

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