Grim and delightful picture book, "There Was an Old Lady"

Jeremy Holmes's There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is a delightful picture-book based on the beloved nursery rhyme. Holmes's illustrations are grim and Gorey-esque, sepia-toned with lots of little comedy moments, whimsical annotations and elaborations (leathery bat-wings on a cow are unexpectedly fitting!). The book is an odd, tall shape (like a CD long-box), and the top third is the old lady's face, with her eyes staring owlishly from behind round glasses. The grand finale of the book ("There was an old lady who swallowed a horse/She's dead of course") is celebrated with a cute mechanical effect: when you turn the last page, the lady's eyes close and the accompanying illustration shows her arms folded across her chest, holding fly-swatter like a lily.

This is one of my favorite rhymes, along with "There's a hole in the bucket," since it contains such an important lesson about life: some solutions are really just problems in disguise.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

• [Anonymous]

  do you REALLY need a spoiler alert for this book?
  everybody knows this rhyme!

  if you needed a spoiler alert for the mechanics of the book, boo hoo… it will still be awesome when you see it for the first time… if it isn’t because this article took all the magic out of it, then you should stop going on the internet.

  or watching movie previews…
  or television…

• [rose bush]

  oh my goddess, this is a MUST have. i’ve just added it to my amazon cart. while i don’t always agree with cory on everything, his book reviews have not done me wrong. i’m currently reading sandman slim based on his review and i’m diggin’ it wicked fierce!

• [TheCrawNotTheCraw]

  “The grand finale of the book (“There was an old lady who swallowed a horse/She’s dead of course”) is celebrated with a cute mechanical effect: when you turn the last page, the lady’s eyes close and the accompanying illustration shows her arms folded across her chest, holding fly-swatter like a lily.”

  While I like knowing about this interesting book, and am glad you mentioned it, I would have appreciated a “Spoiler Alert” concerning the contents of the last page.
  Just a thought.

• [Anonymous]

  Hello All,

  Thanks for all the kind words. This book was a blast to work on and I’m Ãœber excited it made it’s way onto Boing Boing! Along with the book there is a book trailer which can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ChronicleBooks#p/u/3/wZlj_Yszp3U

  and I’ve made a few Old Lady desktop Wallpapers for download: http://www.muttink.com/work.php?&gallery=23&item=125

  Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!!!!!!!!

• [mechanikus]

  You can find a nice commercial for this book with flat mechanics animation, see the video:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZlj_Yszp3U

• [doggo]

  “Beloved” nursery rhyme? If by “beloved” you mean creepy & terrifying. As a child this nursery rhyme, and the illustrated book I had, spooked me badly. It was, of course, the first thing I thought of when the ultimate childhood gross-out happened, I swallowed a fly. (I don’t know why)

  This book is beautiful. Just in time for Christmas. A perfect gift to pass on the fear and loathing to all the young children you know. Muahahahahaha.

  • [Cheqyr]

    Was it the one where a lot of the drawings are silhouettes, and the woman gets more bloated with each verse? Because I’m *still* trying to recover. Brrrr….

    • [doggo]

      Yeah, Cheqyr, that sounds familiar. *shudder*

• [arkizzle / Moderator]

  Beautiful!

• [Anonymous]

  “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly” has an author. See

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Was_an_Old_Lady_Who_Swallowed_a_Fly

• [Gloria]

  I don’t see any Gorey at all. I see more of Jon Sciezska — the cut-out, textured illustration style, along with a subversive tone of humour.

  • [earbox]

    I’m pretty sure you mean Lane Smith–Scieszka is only a writer and Smith is/was the artist for most of his better known books.

    • [Gloria]

      Thanks. You’re totally right.

• [Chrs]

  This rhyme is directly responsible, along with a coloring book on deep-sea fish, for various nightmares about various animals and people eating everything around them and distorting horribly as they did. Eventually, they always tried to come after me. It was real creepy.

• [GaryG]

  Spoiler alert??

  I guess no one should mention Humpty doesn’t make it either.

  Oops.

  ;)

• [flipcloud]

  Agree with Gloria… Not sure where the Gorey comparison came from.

• [missjoyce]

  those were also two of my favorite as a kid, kudos to you.

• [Anonymous]

  The grand finale of the book (“There was an old lady who swallowed a horse/She’s dead of course”)

  Spoiler Alert!