What if You Had Animal Eyes!?

What if You Had Animal Eyes!?

Author: Sandra Markle

Illustrator: Howard McWilliam

Genre: Nonfiction

Major Awards: None

Grade Level: Pre-K-4

Summary: In the book, the author asks a simple question, "What if you had animal eyes?" She goes on to explain how the eyes of different animals work as well as includes an additional fact about each animal's eyes. The book covers animals such as chameleons, clouded leopards, and llamas, among others. On each illustrated page, there is a blurb at the bottom saying what the reader could do if they had the eyes of that animal. At the end of the book, the author talks about how even though it would be fun to have a different animal's eyes, "people eyes" are special too. She has a page explaining how they work and what need them for as well as how to keep your eyes healthy.

Evaluation: I really like this book! It is actually part of a series that Sandra Markle has that includes What if You Had Animal Teeth!?, What if You Had Animal Ears!?, and What if You Had Animal Feet!? among others. I think I would love to have this book in my class, but it would be really neat if I could have the whole set.

This book definitely has the potential to interest children of all ages. Older children can enjoy it on their own and I think younger children would love to listen as their teacher read it aloud to them. I think it also helps spark students' imaginations by helping them picture if they really had the eyes of different animals.

I think I would love to include an assignment in which children mimic the spread that Sandra Markle uses. They could come up with their own animal, do research on it, and create their own spread that includes information about the animals eyes with an illustration of the animal and then next to it draw themselves with that animal's eyes and tell about something they could do if they had those eyes. We could put them all together and create our own class book!