DINNER ON THE FLY

Author: By Liz Rosenberg

Date: SUNDAY, November 16, 1997

Page: L2

Section: Books

Of course, there was one famous old lady who ate so much (a fly, a spider, a bird, and so on to a horse) that in the end she did die ``of course.'' This year's brand-new ``There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly'' is illustrator Simms Taback's die-cut bright-on-black picture-book rendition of the classic folk poem, by that great American lyricist Anonymous. (To me the ultimate version must always remain folksinger Burl Ives's. I hope you know it.) The book's cover shows the old lady herself with a cut-out hole for the mouth, and back behind that cut-out is the title's fly. Each page in the book features a cut-out hole, albeit in the old lady's stomach, which grows larger with each creature she swallows, as indeed does the old lady herself. The moral is stated succinctly at the book's end, ``Moral: Never swallow a horse.''

I'm not sure why the old lady is pictured as cross-eyed -- this seems a curious oversight in our handicap-conscious age -- but the book is otherwise delightfully bizarre, a feast of colors and commentaries. Taback never lets a page go by without an extra bit of play, verbal or visual. One page even features a treeful of birds, ranging from Hungarian partridges to Blackburnian warblers, each identified by a discreet label on the branch upon which it's perched. The bright-against-dark colors affect one like a hyperactive Amish quilt; there is quite enough going on here to entertain both child and adult through many rereadings.

Even closer to home this holiday season is ``I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie'' by Alison Jackson, delightfully illustrated by Judith Byron Schachner. At last, a Thanksgiving book without solemn-looking pilgrims on the cover! ``I Know an Old Lady'' is anything but solemn. This old lady in question, a Thanksgiving visitor, swallows neither flies nor spiders, but she does come bearing a ``Thanksgiving pie'' that she swallows whole as soon as she crosses the threshold. She washes down the pie with a gallon of cider, a roll, a squash, a salad and so on till she has single-handedly (or single-headedly) devoured the entire holiday feast.

The poem is witty (``She was looking quite pallid from eating that salad!'') and fast-paced, cumulative like its elder cousin, and the illustrations keep pace every lively step of the way. My own favorites are the pictures where she swallows things like a butternut squash and a 10-layer cake whole -- this remarkably changes the shape of her face temporarily, then her body, and though the family keeps saying, almost wistfully, ``perhaps she'll die,'' she instead grows to such enormous proportions that she joins another Thanksgiving tradition -- but I won't give the surprise ending away. Let it serve as a warning to those about to stuff themselves after the turkey -- or as the perfect comic antidote for those who already did.