In this raucous twist on a favorite tale, a woman strides through a winter wonderland devouring a very peculiar lineup of objects, including a pipe, coal, tree branches, and a black hat. Colandro offers weak explanations for the cold woman's bizarre appetite, but things become somewhat clearer when the woman finally spits everything back out, and the items assemble themselves into a grinning snowman. Lines such as She swallowed the stick to push down the snow certainly force the theme, but children will enjoy chanting along to the cumulative, rolling rhymes, which put a seasonal twist on the familiar poem. Lee's cartoon art extends the absurd humor in delightful drawings of the manic woman gobbling her strange meal.

K-Gr 2-There was a cold lady who swallowed some snow, then a pipe, then coal, then a hat, and so forth. Written by Lucille Colandro (Scholastic, 2003), this title provides a different look at the old lady who swallowed a fly. Many such take-offs exist, and this is not the best of them. The items swallowed don't have a natural flow or sequence, as in other stories-the bird eating the spider eating the fly, for example. The rhyming is sometimes rather stiff as well, and the finale is quite predictable. That, however, is the book's strength. This is a story teachers will welcome for introducing the fine art of predicting outcomes. There are enough clues along the way that most students will know what's coming, and be delighted in being right when the cold lady hiccups up a snowman. The lively background music and enthusiastic narration by actor Skip Hinnant keep the story skipping merrily along to an unsurprising but fun ending that has a useful curriculum application.-Teresa Bateman, Brigadoon Elementary School, Federal Way, WA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.