David Shannon’s book, No David! is about a young boy who seems to do everything his mother does not want him to do. He breaks the rules, makes a lot of messes, and is always being yelled at. Simms Taback’s book, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is about an old lady who eats a fly and then eats an animal to eat the fly and so on. They have both won the Caldecott Honor award and are similar in a few ways. David and the old lady both do things that lead to negative results. David disobeys his mother, therefore he is always getting yelled at. The old lady keeps swallowing animal to eat the previous one that eventually leads to her death. No, David! has few words, but with the illustrations, it is easy to follow the story line. There are about three to four words for every two pages. The words are black and look like they were written with a pen. They are sharp lines that are thicker if the mom is yelling at David. Sometimes the words are in all capital letters to show that the mom is angry and trying to control him. The similarity between each page is that there are exclamation points at the end of each phrase. The words are coming from the mom even though she is not in the pictures. There do not need to be more words because the illustrations show everything that David does wrong. This book seems like it is for a younger age group because it is an easy read. There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is a repetitive book. She swallowed a fly and thinks she might die. Then she swallows a spider to eat the fly. The story goes on and on about swallowing a bigger animal to eat the previous one. There are short phrases from the animals that are not part of the story line, they are there for entertainment. The words are written in black onto a bright colored rectangle. Each word has a different color so it makes it look unorganized. The text looks like it is written by an elementary kid, the letters are different shaped and some have circles drawn on the letters.
Illustrations in a children’s book can be more important than the text. Pictures can grab the attention of young readers and help their imagination. No, David! does not have a lot of text, but is more focused on the illustrations. Each page is completely covered with a wide variety of detail and color. David comes off as a naughty child, he has beady eyes, pointy fingers, and triangular shaped teeth. The straight lines connected to a point seem to make him look scary. His face is animated a little different on each page, but he always has an evil or mischievous look on his face. David is not a child who likes to sit still; he is constantly getting into different things. One of the pages shows David taking a bath; he is holding a toy shark acting like it is going to eat the rubber duck. This picture seems like it is coming to life. The shark’s mouth is open and it looks like the duck is trying to swim away. This is one of the things that make the story so interesting, the pictures look real because the objects look like they are moving. There are a variety of colors used on each page, but the one thing I noticed was there is always a bold color used. It is usually something that David should not be getting into that is red or orange which are more harsh colors. The walls change colors depending on what David is doing, but what is interesting is one of the last pages the back ground is finally a cool color. The wall is blue and David’s mom is showing affection towards him, it proves that colors change the mood of the story. There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly uses bold colors on each page and is covered with different pictures. This book does uses curved, flowing lines unlike No, David!. Each page includes a picture of the old lady and adds an animal to the page each time she eats one. She comes off as a goofy old lady: she is wearing an oversized hat with a flower in it, a big dress with a bow tie on it, and gray hair that sticks straight out. The coolest part about this book is that there is shape of a different animal cut out on each page. The Shape is placed where her stomach should be, so it looks like the animal is in her stomach. The same colors are used on each page. There is always one black page that contains all of the animals she has eaten and one yellow page with her picture and the animal shape cut out of her stomach. The black page is full of bright colored square shapes on it that corresponds with the page with the old lady on it because her dress is black with the colored shapes on it. The illustrations from this book are overwhelming because there is no white at all on the pages. There are so many colors that it can be distracting. The two children’s books I chose were similar in some aspects, but different in many ways. The main idea was similar because David and the old lady made bad decisions over and over that eventually led to something bad. The books both used bright colors and filled the whole page with illustrations. I do believe kids like pictures better, but the text makes the story even better. The biggest difference was the No, David! did not have many words and the other story was filled with words all over the pages. My favorite book was There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly because it is fun to read. The old lady does look creepy, but everything else about the book I enjoy. The colors were crazy and caught my attention. My favorite part about the book was that the holes cute out of the old lady’s stomach showed the animal she ate. That was really creative and different than most books I have seen. I liked that the story was repetitive and kept having things added to it. No, David! was not a bad book, but there were a few things that were odd. The biggest problem I had with the book was that on some of his illustrations he had some pointed fingers and some round fingers. All five of his fingers did not look the same. He also is a scary looking little boy. The one thing that most kids would laugh about in the picture is of him running out of the house naked. It surprises me they would put that picture in a children’s book. Overall I learned a lot on how the appearance and little details can make a huge difference on what someone thinks of the book. Based on the cover I thought I would like No, David! better, but you cannot judge a book by its cover.