Lucille Colandro

Lucille Colandro is a children's author, born in Sacramento, California, who writes Scholastic's rhyming picture-book series based on the traditional song "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly".

She took a BA and an MA at Pennsylvania State University and taught English at a high school in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, before working in publishing. A reference entry from the mid-2000s lists her as an acquisition director at Scholastic Book Club in New York, and says the first book grew out of a lunchtime conversation with colleagues about titles for the book clubs.

Each title retells the cumulative pattern of the song around a season, holiday or theme, with the Old Lady swallowing a bat, a bell, some leaves, a turkey or some books in turn. Jared Lee illustrated There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow!. Other books replace the Old Lady with a pirate, a mermaid, an astronaut or a scientist, and there are board books, Spanish editions and Scholastic Reader titles. Open Library records 39 works under her name. Colandro has described her audience as young children who enjoy humour and rhyme.

For collectors

The books are low-priced paperbacks sold mainly through Scholastic's school book clubs, so demand comes chiefly from families and teachers rather than first-edition collectors. Catalogue dates for the earliest titles disagree between sources (Open Library and the reference entry give different years for the Cold Lady and Bat books), so anyone assembling firsts should rely on the copyright page of each copy.