I SAW ANACONDA

An Amazonian variation on “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly,” with flaps and pop-ups.

“I saw Anaconda swallow a tick… / It made her tummy hop and kick! / Will she be sick?” Yes, as it turns out, after swallowing a skink, a bright red frog, a piranha, a stork, a “gator,” and, climactically, the narrator himself—a young white explorer. Clarke’s verses are easily sung to the original’s tune, and a sequence of flaps and gatefolds culminating in a big, crowd-pleasing pop-up tableau to illustrate “sick—ick!” add extra measures of fun to Dodd’s cartoon views of the ditzy-looking snake and other popeyed riverine fauna. This isn’t the first remake that gives the incautious eater a better fate than “She’s dead, of course!” or even to be set in a tropical rain forest (Jennifer Ward’s There Was an Old Monkey Who Swallowed a Frog, illustrated by Steve Gray, 2010), but the images, the moving parts, and the format are all large enough to keep both small and spread-out classes or storytime groups rapt.

A less-gothic alternative to classic versions.