There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly-Simms Taback

 Bibliography: Taback, S. (1997). There Was an Old lady Who Swallowed a Fly. Viking. ISBN 9780780432390


Plot summary

A cautionary tale about an old lady who accidentally swallows a fly.  Chaos ensues as she continues to swallow bigger and bigger animals all in an effort to catch the fly, only to end in tragedy.


Critical Analysis

The story is a cumulative one, as the story continuously introduces information by repeating and adding on to the previous information. The story is based on a children’s folk song written during World War II.* In retelling it, Taback doesn’t make any changes to the original lyrics. However, in repeating the iteration “I don’t know why she swallowed the fly” several of the animals comment on her condition, a new addition to the story.  The illustrator took an interesting approach by depicting each animal in the woman’s stomach as a cut out which shows the animals she had already eaten from the previous page now in her stomach. When the page is flipped, the newly eaten animal now appears in the cut out of her stomach. Though the illustrations are two dimensional, it doesn’t detract from the overall quality of the work. The pictures are brightly colored and cartoonish in a way that is silly and entertaining for a young audience. Very enjoyable.

*researched on https://smithsonianapa.org/


Reviews

Kirkus Reviews: "It is good fun to watch the old lady bulge and bloat, and the sheer corniness of the verse continues to be deeply gratifying."


Amazon.com: "The book is beautifully illustrated and lovingly designed by Simms Taback…."


Awards

Notable Children’s Book 1998


Connections


For early elementary students, create cutouts of each of the animals the old lady ate and in small groups, put them in order by how they were eaten.


Have students create a self portrait that includes depicting all the food they like to eat in their stomachs. 


Have students write different, less tragic, endings to the story.

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