Customer Reviews

There Was An Old Monster!

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There was an old monster who ate a tick and a lot more things. At the end of the story a tiger eats him. I like the pictures. I like the book. I would probably like to read it again.

The big wide-eyed monster's eyes got even wider when he swallowed a tick. YUK! It made him just plain old sick. Well, he decided he would swallow some ants to try to catch that tick, but it didn't help one iota. The only thing that did was "had him dancing in his pants" because ants make you do those sorts of things. Next he tried swallowing a lizard to catch the ants. Mistake. He still felt sick. He tried a bat, a jackal, and a bear. Was anything the monster swallowed going to make him feel better?

"There was an old monster
who swallowed a tick.
I don't know why he swallowed the tick
`cause it made him feel sick."

This is one monster story that won't scare your preschooler, but rather will keep him or her calling for more. The artwork is extremely vibrant and delightful. The cumulative story in rhyme is reminiscent of "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" and will get your preschooler giggling and asking for more. I downloaded the song on the Scholastic site. It was more like a rhythmical recitation than a "song," but it is utterly adorable and catchy. Scritchy-scratch, scritch, scritchy-scratch . . . believe me, you're going to wear the pages reading this one over and over again!

My baby loves this book, the sing song and colors keep him intereested and it's a lot better than the old version with the old lady (who swallowed a fly)- which personally creeps me out.

My kids and I LOVE this book! It's rhythm and rhyming are amazing - and the kids picked up the words after the first reading - especially about the ants!

Bought this for preschool storytime during the Halloween season. The song can be uploaded and while cute, it doesn't exactly match the tune as Old Lady.

I work as a speech-pathologist in an elementary school, with students pre-school - Grade 5. This book is a hit with my older students. Everyone has heard of "The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed the Fly," and therefore they already know the basic format of the book. There are many ways to use this book - including: questions about sequencing of events and predicting what will happen next. I will be using this book a lot. The kids especially loved hearing it at Halloween time, when monsters are a hot topic of conversation.

Just got this book and have shared it with my music classes grades K-6 and they ALL love it. They ask "read it again, read it again" when we finish. The downloadable CD is adorable! Winner book!

Rebecca, Adrian and Ed Emberley's THERE WAS AN OLD MONSTER! is a whimsical rhyme with a downloadable sing-along song telling of an old monster who swallows a tick and begins to feel sick. He also swallows some ants and dances in his pants, and more . Perfect for read-aloud sound effects!

Emberley, Rebecca. There Was An Old Monster! Orchard Books. 2009.

I can hear the words of the classic song of "There was an old lady Who Swallowed a Fly" compete for dominance in my head as I try to read the first verse of this amusing variant, "There was an old monster who swallowed a tick. I don't know why he swallowed the tick `cause it made him feel sick." In the next verse, the monster swallows some ants, "He took a big chance when he swallowed those ants `cause man those ants had him dancing in his pants." Participatory possibilities abound and include the fun of repeating the following set of sound words "Scritchy-scratch, scritch, scritchy-scratch. Vibrant colors, abstract shapes, and a constantly shifting perspective integrate in clever, jazzy illustrations that stand out dramatically from glossy black paper: the multicolored, horned monster with mismatched eyes manages to swallow successively larger creatures in his amorphous black tummy even a big brown bear, "Now this old monster he felt like he was dyin' so the next thing he tried to swallow was a lion. All of a sudden there came a great ROAR! And that monster was no more! Listen to the chanted version downloadable from [...] before sharing with others.

Review copy received free from publisher