Who Ate the Snake? A Desert Food Chain

Defining “food chain” as: “The plants and animals linked together by what eats what”, the four books in Crabtree’s “Follow the Food Chain” each take young readers to a different ecosystem and follow one food chain in that particular geographic setting. Each book begins in essentially the same fashion by stating:

All living things need food to give them energy to live. Plants make their own food using energy from sunlight, air, soil, and water.

Animals cannot make their own food. They eat plants or other animals to survive....
Plants and animals are linked together by many different food chains. This book looks at a ....”

To assist readers in visualizing each book’s food chain, the series’ designer has incorporated a diagram consisting of a linear series of circles that are connected by arrows moving from left to right. Accompanying text explains, “In a food chain, an arrow shows the food energy moving from one living thing to another.” The six or seven circles each contain only a question mark until it needs to be filled in because it is the next link in the chain. In all four books, the first visual is the sun while the second will be some form of plant. The final animal to be found in a circle is the top predator in that particular ecosystem.

Who Ate the Snake? A Desert Food Chain is set in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and California. Following the sun image, the chain continues with the cactus flower/fruit, bee/rabbit, rattlesnake, roadrunner and the desert’s top predator, the coyote. Lest readers think that a particular link’s diet is limited to what came below it in the food chain, Ridley adds clarifying text. For example, though the roadrunner did eat the rattlesnake, that reptile is not the roadrunner’s sole dietary choice. “Roadrunners eat both plants and animals. They eat fruits and seeds, as well as insects, lizards, small birds, and mice.” A weakness of Who Ate the Snake? is that it engages in a bit of unnecessary misdirection. Ridley first identifies that the cactus has flowers, and the next chapter asks, “Who ate the cactus flower?” with the questionable “ate” answer being – a bee. Logically, the next chapter should then be titled, “Who ate the bee?”, but, instead it’s “Who ate the cactus fruit?”, the answer being – a rabbit. While the bee “stopover” allowed Ridley to discuss pollination and may be informative”, it’s really off-topic.

Each book in the “Follow the Food Chain” series has a form of review chapter in which the circles, now numbered and containing their visuals, are repeated, and readers are invited to identify each link in the chain. The final chapter reminds readers that the links in a food chain links can change depending upon where the ecosystem is found. As well, this section considers threats to the books’ food chains. For Who Ate the Snake?, Ridley identifies that:

There are many threats to desert food chains. More people living in the Sonoran Desert is one. People build roads and homes. They use groundwater, or water deep underground. This leaves less water for plants such as cacti.

Like other Crabtree series, “Follow the Food Chain” utilizes facing page chapters that contain brief text supported by full-colour photos and diagrams. The books’ final page is shared by a glossary labelled “Useful Words” (which defines words that had been bolded in the main text) and an index. Though not accessible at the time of this review, teacher guides will be available in the future via the QR code on the back of the book or by going to www.crabtreebooks.com/resource/teachers-guides.

Despite the pollination digression, overall the simple, straightforward text of Who Ate the Snake? A Desert Food Chain, well-supplemented by numerous illustrations, offers students excellent information while effectively modelling how they could construct their own food chains.