There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

by Simms Taback

Paperback, 1999

Status

Check shelf

Call number

E T

Publication

Scholastic (1999), Paperback, 32 pages

Description

Presents the traditional version of a famous American folk poem first heard in the U.S. in the 1940's with illustrations on die-cut pages that reveal all that the old lady swallows.

Local notes

1409-019

User reviews

LibraryThing member sarahbeth109
Excellent Book! Great Pictures! I love the holes in the book that allow you to see what is next. (Predictable) Great as a class project for retelling or even a presentation.
LibraryThing member kapeoples
Kindergarten or First grade reading level. This is a fun rhyming book that can be used to teach students about all the rhyming words as well as sounds of letters. The book is very interactive and fun. The illustrations are very colorful and seem to jump off the page.
LibraryThing member GI142984
The story is about an old woman who at first swallows a fly and thinks to get rid of the fly she needs to swallow something to catch it. As The story goes on the old woman swallows a variety of animals. It’s a tragic ending but it was very humorous.
I read this book in front of a bunch of three
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year olds and they absolutely LOVED it. This book was one of my favorite books I remembered from elementary school so I was thrilled that they enjoyed it as much as I did. Kids love cumulative tales to follow along with and this book made interaction with them easy. The illustrations were very colorful and comical.
As a class project children can make their own story following this story line and make their own illustrations. This idea could also work during a Holiday like Halloween or Thanksgiving using food.
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LibraryThing member daffyduck24
I am using this book as Traditional Fantasy. The book starts off with an old lady who swallows a fly. The woman then swallows many other animals to try to catch the fly. The last animal she swallows is a horse and after she swallows the horse the lady dies.

I like the rhyming pattern and the
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illustrations in this book. I love how the illustrator shows every animal the lady swallows.

One classroom extension I would use is to read the story and then play the music. The children will memorize the story after hearing the song over and over again. Another idea would be to use the puppet that you can purchase with the book and as you read have the puppet swallow animals as the lady did in the book.
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LibraryThing member Jparker03
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly is about an old lady who swallowed a fly and nobody knows why. The story tells all the other animals and bugs she swallowed and why she swallowed them but still nobody knows why she swallowed that fly.

I like the way the story rhymes. The story just flows
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once you start reading it. I have loved this book since I was little. The pictures in this book are great. Each page has a whole on her stomach so you can see the bugs or animals on the next page and it looks like it is really in her stomach.

You could have the students make up a rhyme of the bugs they would eat. They could draw a picture of a person with the bug or animal showing in their stomach.
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LibraryThing member eayerby
Any child would love this book. It's very comical and keeps you interested in seeing what the old lady is going to swallow next. It was illustrated very well with lots of great pictures and bright colors. I remembered reading this when I was younger and it was good reading it again.
LibraryThing member Charlee526
Very funny book! I remeber my teacher reading it to us when i was young! Kids will love everything about it!
LibraryThing member jredway
This is a classic tale of an old lady who swallowed a fly and could possibly die. She first swallows the fly, but in order to catch the fly, she must swallow spider. The tale goes on detailing all the things she had to eat to catch one lowly fly, but the scary thing is will her strange appetite
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lead to her end.

I love this book. I grew up reading this book and others very similar to it. It is a cumulative tale, and it is very easy for young readers to grasp. The repetition make reading easier, but the suspense of what the old lady will eat nest keeps the children’s attention.

In the classroom, I would most likely use this book with emergent readers. The repetition and building of the story is a great tool for working with that level. Another idea would be to create an art project. We could create our own version of the old lady, and each of the children could contribute to the dinning menu.
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LibraryThing member sarah_walker
The basic plot of the story invovles a very strange old lady. As the story progresses, the old lady swallows various animals in order to catch the one that she ate before.

While I find the story repetitive, I would recommend the story to parents of young children. However I would The award-winning
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illustrations are (describe medium)

The
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LibraryThing member Jenny_Laura
This book is wonderful with repetition and is pretty humorous. I think that most children are familiar with the story, and this book illustrates beautifully the what happens. The illustrator uses a cartoon approach to illustrating the pictures.

I would use this book with teaching writing and I would
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have my students come up with what could happen if one person did something, then another did it too, and so on.
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LibraryThing member Katie20
This book is about an old lady who swallows different animals. Throughout the book it talks about the animals and why she swallowed them. She swallows smaller to larger animals. At the end of the book she dies. This book is fun and simple because the students can read a long with you. There are
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also other activities you can use with this book.
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LibraryThing member crdutton
There Was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly is a great book and it is very well illustrated. It is a rhyming book that is very fun to read. It helps with memorization because it repeats things on each page. First an old lady swallows a fly, then eventually, an owl, a cat, a cow, and a horse. At last,
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the old lady dies because she swallows a horse. Students find this ver funny and most can remember what is coming next on each page. The pictures in this book are very colorful and fun also.
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LibraryThing member jrjohnson1
Great book to read when learning about growing patterns. Children will love this book and will be able to guess what pattern is next.
LibraryThing member Charitas
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly is a very funny story. She first swallowed a fly but no one knows why. She then swallowed a spider to catch the fly, bird to catch the spider, cat to catch the bird, dog to catch the cat, cow to catch the dog, and a horse, but she's dead of course.

I love
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this book and song. I find it to be exciting and hilarious. The pictues are bright and colorful and kind of goofy which I like. I just wish we knew why she swallowed the fly!

This would be a great time to work on the food pyramid. Have copies of the lady and the students can draw the food in the different layers.
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LibraryThing member ascott68
This age-old, "sing-song", rhyming story has delighted children for generations. The "yuckyness" of swallowing a fly and various other critters seems to strike a gleeful response from all.

I love this poem. It was read to me as a child and I have continued the tradition with my own children.
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Children seem never to tire of hearing it--and it is easy to memorize, so it is ready to tell all the time!

It would be fun in the classroom to make a mobile of all the critters that the old lady swallowed.
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LibraryThing member servantHEART
The old lady, as she is called, swallows a fly, but we don’t know why. However, we do know why she swallows the spider, bird, cat, dog, cow, and horse. The book has a rhyming and sing-song feel. In the end the old lady dies because you can’t swallow a horse and expect to live!

I enjoyed reading
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the book because it has wild and crazy colorful pictures that would hold a child’s attention. The words appear as they were handwritten and painted instead of typed as is most expected. The cut outs were appropriate to show the insects and animals the lady swallowed--genius.

In the classroom, I would allow the children to illustrate their favorite part of the story with colorful designed papers, colored pencils, and markers. This would imitate the style of illustration used in the book.
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LibraryThing member kidlit9
creative illustration of familiar children's song
LibraryThing member denisecase
this is a silly book/ song about an old women who swallows a fly and other animals until she finally dies. The song builds up in the size of the animals. She swallows one to catch another animal. After she swallows the horse she dies.

This is a story that I enjoy using sign language to read to my
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students. It is fun and animated and they learn some neat signs for the animals. I also enjoy the ryhming of this book.

I have signed this story to tell it and that was a lot of fun. I have also seen the teacher dress up and use stuffed animals and put them into her shirt. The kids loved it. You could also talk about what it would feel like to have the different animals inyour stomach.
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LibraryThing member tapestry100
Apparently I am the only person on the planet who has not heard of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. I discovered this quite by chance while at Walt Disney World earlier in the year with my friend C, and he mentioned something about it, and when I told him I had no idea what he was talking
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about, he started to recite it. Just about every other person on the bus promptly picked up the story as well, leaving me feeling quite baffled that I seemed to have missed such a rite of passage of growing up. A few months later, I was catching up on episodes of Desperate Housewives, and one of the characters mentions it on the show, and at that point I decide that it's a sign that I need to buy this book.

Basically, the premise is an old lady swallows a fly, and then continues to swallow other animals (a spider, a cat, a dog, etc) to deal with the animal that she just previously ate, until she finally eats a horse and dies. Honestly, there is nothing to this story, but the illustrations are fun, with diecuts in every other page, consecutively growing with each animal the woman eats. No great work of genius, but clever all the same.
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LibraryThing member RochelleRobinson
This funny story is about an old lady who swallowed a fly...a spider....a bird......a cat.....a dog.....and a cow! She swallows one thing to catch another. She doesn't know why she is swallowing these creatures. Perhaps she will die? Oh my!

This was a good read because the story kept me in suspense
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of what was she going to swallow next? The bright colorful pages were fun to look at. There were parts of the story that I just laughed out loud!

This book causes me to use my imagination. Children love to use their imaginations and create their very own story. As an activity following the story I would have the children brainstorm and come up with their very own tales. We would bring it all back and try and figure out if the lady REALLY did swallow a cow. I mean...is this really possible? I would let the children decide!
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LibraryThing member MaeBHollie
This book is a delightful illustration of the popular children’s folk song of the same name. First the old lady accidentally swallows a fly, which is entirely plausible and has happened to many people, but then she swallows other animals in succession in attempt to get rid of her original
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problem, by and by, making things worse for herself she continues to try to solve the problem with the same logic, by swallowing another animal to get rid of the previous.

My personal experience is that this in one of the best books available for sheer entertainment value (high on the "get kids excited about books" scale!), but it also has so many other uses and purposes. The illustrations are top notch, and kids and adults will love the hilarity of the story. After all who hasn't had a problem that they have tried to solve but managed to only make things worse?

This is a great way to introduce children to folk songs, to practice sequencing, to talk about domestic animals, it would also be fun to come up with alternate endings with kids and see what other animals she might get tangled up with.
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LibraryThing member clstone
'There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly' by Simms Taback is a very colorful book that tells the story of an old lady that swallows insects and animals. The book begins when the old lady swallows a fly and continues with a spider, a cat, a cow and finally a horse. The pages are cut out so that it
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looks as if the reader can see the animal inside the old lady's stomach. Each page in the book rhymes like a poem and is full of vibrant, colorful pictures. I would read this book to students in grades K-2.
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LibraryThing member emilylock86
The Caldecott Honor book is about an old lady who accidentally swallows a fly. In effort to get the fly out she swallows other animals and insects to get the thing before it out. As it goes on the animals get bigger until she swallows a horse and dies.

I loved this as a kid. I never saw the book
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until I was an adult but my mom taught my siblings and I this song once when we were on a long road trip.

With this book you can have to children interact with you, having them help you tell the story. You can also introduce sequencing and rhyming. Have them do a sequencing activity where they have to put in order the animals the old lady swallowed. There is also many rhyming words that you can have the children spot out in the book.
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LibraryThing member jamie_tow
This book "There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly", I found it to be funny and hilarious. The illustration are also great, colorful, expressive and silly. It really captivates the children.

When I read this book to my preschooler they loved it! We read it through once, then I taught the children
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the song, while using the finger play that I checked out at my local library. It was a great interaction during the story and finger play.

There was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is an excellent book. It expand the imagination of children, so they can enhance their learning skills. Given the ability to see directly into the old lady's stomach will attract their small eyes. Reading this story create a wonderful memory skills and encourges children who loves to read because of the rhyming and well written vocabulary
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LibraryThing member clstone
'There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly' by Simms Taback is a very colorful book that tells the story of an old lady that swallows insects and animals. The book begins when the old lady swallows a fly and continues with a spider, a cat, a cow and finally a horse. The pages are cut out so that it
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looks as if the reader can see the animal inside the old lady's stomach. Each page in the book rhymes like a poem and is full of vibrant, colorful pictures. I would read this book to students in grades K-2.
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Language

Original publication date

1997

Physical description

32 p.; 6.6 inches

ISBN

0590632647 / 9780590632645

Barcode

34747000071569
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