Thelonius Monster’s Sky-High Fly Pie
by Judy Sierra and illustrations by Edward Koren
I normally only have a few seconds to scan a children’s book before deciding to borrow it and this one caught my attention. I am a very big fan of ink illustrations and I think Edward Koren did an excellent job in depicting Thelonius Monster and his little fly friends. I also love the fact that he used only one color to contrast the black and white drawings, and what better color to choose than the slimey limey green for delicious crispy flies monsters love to eat!
The text sort of rhymes with “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…” and the story is about Thelonius Monster who once swallowed a fly and found it quite delicious that he one day decides to make a pie made with scrumptious fly topping. So he contacts uber fly hacker via email through 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.”
So chef Thelonius concocted the perfect trap and lures thousands of succulent flies for his pie, only he forgets to bake it and “the pie full of flies lifted off with a VOOM.” To the luck of Thelonius and his ravished monster guests, the flies’ little footsies come unstuck:
But then, by a stroke of incredible luck, in the sky all the flies’ little feet came unstuck.
When the pie fell to earth in a huge cloud of dust, eleventeen monsters devoured the crust.
Unlike the classic folktale of the old lady who swallowed the fly and dies in the end, this story has a happy ending 
Funny and original. I would recommend this to 3-4 year olds.
Review by: Kids Books Blog
