Although the progress of modern information technology and society has made modern junior high school English textbooks gradually develop in the direction of multi-modality, in actual teaching, teachers make less use of textbook illustrations and have difficulties in using them. Based on the two dimensions of classification and function of illustrations, the article Save the Sharks! from the Unit 13 Reading section of the Grade 9 English textbook of PEP is used as an example to discuss the effective use of textbook illustrations in reading teaching in conjunction with actual teaching. Teachers can use the illustrations in the three stages of reading, namely pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading, to help them enrich the classroom content and present a better quality of reading classroom.