There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Dragon!

by Lucille Colandro, Jared Lee (Illustrator)

Overview

The bestselling Old Lady series is back...with a magical twist!

The Old Lady is back and this time she's swallowed a princess, a dragon, and a knight...to create a classic fairytale!

With rhyming text and hilarious illustrations, this lively song will appeal to readers both old and new. A perfect year-round read!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781338879117
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/04/2023
Series:	There Was an Old Lady Series
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	49,006
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.30(d)
Lexile:	AD390L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

Lucille Colandro has written many books for children, including the bestselling There Was an Old Lady series illustrated by Jared Lee.
Jared Lee has illustrated more than 100 books for young readers. He has received awards from the Society of Illustrators, the Martha Kinney Cooper Ohioana Library Association, the National Cartoonists Society, and others. He lives in Ohio with his wife and a menagerie of dogs, cats, ponies, ducks, and a few unknown creatures.

Editorial Reviews

2023-02-08
A very silly fairy tale–inspired riff on the nursery rhyme.

The light-skinned old lady scarfs down a dragon for no discernable reason: “Can you imagine?” The dragon is followed by a tan-skinned princess “to guide the dragon,” a light-skinned knight “to soar with the princess,” a castle “for all to assemble,” a moat “to surround the castle,” a light-skinned mermaid “to float in the moat,” and finally “a book.” That volume proves to be a purgative: The old lady “began to exhale,” and “out came a magical fairy tale.” The one page of the fairy-tale book shown depicts the knight saving the princess from the dragon (the mermaid is just an onlooker) above the final phrase, “Happy reading!” No guiding, soaring, or assembling in sight. The mortal peril of ingesting heaps of the ridiculous has disappeared: There’s no more threat that “perhaps she’ll die.” Frequent repetition of imagine to rhyme with dragon might prove trying, but the zany action overcomes the tedium: Lee’s cartoon characters, bug-eyed and bulbous-nosed, slide down the old lady’s maw and float in her belly. Like many of the books in this astoundingly popular and drawn-out series, this one abandons the metrical structure and the logic of the original, and unlike some, it does not add educational tidbits. Still, past performance and the wacky illustrations promise library, classroom, and bedtime thrills. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Another absurd tale of the omnivorous old woman consuming the inedible. (Picture book. 4-6)

Kirkus Reviews