Children’s Literature Evaluation Form

Your Name: Emani Pegues

Book Title: There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly!
Author: Lucile Colandro
Genre: Children’s literature, picture book
Illustrator: Jared D. Lee
Publisher/Year: Scholastic 2014
Evaluate the Book for the following elements
Style and Language: Using examples for the book, explain the following: Word
choices, dialogue, rhythm, rhyme and sentence length. Share unexpected
insights or interesting information the reader learns from this story. (5 points)
This story focuses on rhyming. For example, “There was an old lady who swallowed a
spider that wriggled, and jiggled, and tickled inside her.” Another example is, “There was
an old lady who swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed that fly. She won’t say
why.” The reader learns the reason for each swallowing so they understand why the old
lady is swallowing. The children will laugh and find this book funny.
Character: With examples from the book, provide the following- (5 points) Who is
the main character? How can the reader relate to the character? Who are the
supporting characters?
The main character is the old lady. The reader can relate to the character because they
are always trying new things. Hopefully this book will be entertaining for the children and
make them laugh. The supporting characters are the things that she swallows such as
the fly, spider, cat, bird, etc. For example, “She swallowed the dog to catch the cat. She
swallowed the cat to catch the bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider. She
swallowed the spider to catch the fly.” I think this also helps the reader learn how to
categorize and organize many different things in a story.
Plot: Summarize the major events of the story (6 points)
The old lady swallowed a fly, spider, bird, cat, dog, goat, and cow. After swallowing all,
she coughed them all up.

Setting: Explain the place and time of this book. (2 points)

The time of the book is during the daytime, the opening picture shows light. It also
shows that they are outside. The old lady is walking and goes to different areas to
swallow different things. For example, she is outside then she walks by a house full of
cats.They are all outside.
Theme: What is the main message of this book? (2 points)
The main message of this book is don’t bite off more than you can chew. Take your time
and wait. The old lady was in such a rush to get the fly out that she put too many things
in and too big things in her throat. It is important to think before you act!

Illustration: Analyze the book you selected with the following categories
Style (realism, surrealism, expressionism, impressionism, naïve, cartoon art)? (2
points) The illustrations in the book are realism. It shows everything she swallows to be
consumed inside her which looks very real.

Media Choice (paints, oils, watercolors, pencils, pen, charcoal, crayons, acrylic,
chalk): (2 points) The media choice is pencil and crayon.

Give examples of describe how the following visual elements are used in the
illustrations: (3)
Line: It is mostly straight lines. The lines are placed at angles. For example, the cat’s
ears are angled to make a triangle. The lines also make the windows and ladder. The
curved lines make the nose, the cat’s tail, the spider legs, and the bushes. The curved
bushes show that it is windy much like the curved cat tail shows the cat is spooked. A
straight line also represents the spider’s web going down. The curved lines also
represent the cows body mixture of black and white.
Shapes: The triangle makes the cat’s ears, rectangles make the ladder, squares make
the windows, circles for the spider’s body, triangles are the teeth and the birds, and
circles are also eyes and glasses.
Color: Blue is the sky, green is the bushes and trees, black is shirt, white is glasses and
the spots on animals (dog and cow), red hat, purple and blue for spider spots, brown for
root of tree, red and black for birds, pink for skin, and pink for nose.
Texture: The fur of the cat and cow, the spots on the spider, the wings of the fly, and the
green bushes.

Page design (placement of the illustrations, use of borders, white and dark space
and all pages the same or different). (3) The dark spaces are the spots on the
animals, the shadows from the ground, the inside of her stomach which is a black hole,
and the scarf that shifts from white to black. The illustrations go from big to small, you
see how big the animal is and half of the animal is shrunken into the small lady’s mouth
(Cow). The borders are squares with different colors such as blue and green. The
pages are split between two things: either the old lady is eating something or the things
inside her belly are chasing each other. The white represents the sky, spots on animals,
eyes, and wings.

Child Development Theory:

Choose either Piaget, Erickson or Social Emotional to describe the connection to
the book
Chose 1 only (5 points) Piaget: Name the stage Preoperational stage and the age
2-7 years Explain the cognitive development from this stage and provide an
example from the book to support your choice: The cognitive development from this
stage is that they understand the world through language and mental images. An
example from the story is the lady swallows a fly, the children can picture this image in
their head and it builds their vocabulary and language through all of the rhyming.