Bye-Bye, Fly Pie: Thelonius Monster's Sky-High Fly Pie by Judy Sierra

With the meter and rhyme scheme of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and a main monster who collects the flies for the filling of his pie from such gross-out locations as kitty litter boxes, cow-pie meadows, piles of manure, and, of course, the sewer, Judy Sierra and Edward Koren have a sure-fire hit of the "gross-out genre" for the picture book set.

When Thelonius Monster swallows a fly and begins to crave a fly pie, he e-mails that expert on fresh fly provender, arachnid@spider.net.

"Thelonius urgently
e-mailed a spider.
He wanted advice from a savvy insider.
"You'll need something sticky" was her reply,
To catch a fly."

Thelonius Monster concocted a goo
of molasses and sugar and honey and glue,
and he rolled out a crust of astonishing size.
Now for the flies . . .

Thelonius visits the aforementioned, er, collection points, and invites all his monster friends and family to feast on a pie made of thousands of succulent flies, with "their footsies all stuck" in his culinary creation. The guests are entranced with the glistening, humming, and buzzing pie. Unfortunately for the insectivorous diners, before they can tuck in to the tasty pastry, it lifts off, and to the sound of thousands of little green fly wings, it flies high into the sky. ("For though it had taken him so long to make it, the monster had somehow forgotten to bake it!") But before the pie rises as high as a blue goose, with incredible luck the flies' feet come a-loose. The crust falls back to earth, the toothy and sweet-toothed monsters devour it all--flies or not, and Thelonius is forever more their go-to pie guy!

Sierra's catchy, wacky rhymes and Koren's scratchy, toothy monsters go together like, well, flies and honey, and another classic-to-be of the fly genre is, er, airborne. Pair this 2007 ALA Notable Book with any of the I Know an Old Lady Who . . . . stories or with Jim Aylesworth's and Stephen Gammell's Old Black Fly or Doreen Cronin's and Harry Bliss' Diary of a Fly and get a real buzz going!