GOODBYE FLY!
by Grandma T
A girl discusses how to use a fly swatter in this battle cry against nasty, biting insects from Grandma T in her picture-book debut.
When Jaida’s grandmother buys her a fly swatter, she doesn’t know why anyone would want one. But grandma teaches her the importance of killing flies. Because flies settle on “poopie,” they can make people sick and contaminate food. Jaida decides to do her best to kill the obnoxious insects with her fly swatter. The rest of the book, told in rhyming couplets, is dedicated to how there’s nothing good about flies (except, perhaps, that frogs eat them), what to do without your fly swatter (use a rolled-up newspaper), and how to clean a gross weapon. The couplets generally scan well rhythmically, and although some of the rhymes are a stretch (“dizzy” with “crazy”; “beings” with “wings”), young readers will find the vocabulary approachable. While anyone who has ever encountered a biting fly is sure to empathize with Jaida’s irritation at the creatures, parents uncomfortable with the word “kill” will find it repeated frequently in these pages. The ink and crayon illustrations featuring a white family are all hand drawn in a simple cartoon style and may inspire young readers to draw their own fanciful fly images.
A humorous tale about the ongoing contest of human versus fly (where the insect is the ultimate loser).