Ward. There Was an Old Pirate

There Was an Old Pirate who Swallowed a Fish is a children's book by Jennifer Ward, with art by Steve Gray, published in 2014. It is available at the Internet Archive. To date, Jennifer Ward has done 6 "swallowing" books, all of which I will be profiling here at the blog eventually.

Here is a YouTube read-along:

This follows the usual formula, with a fun refrain: "Yo ho ho! Watch his belly grow!" By the time it's all over, he's swallowed a fish, a bird, a map, gold, a chest, a plank, the sail, the mast, and finally the ship, and so in the end, "There was an old pirate, a captain he be, who sank to the bottom of the deep, dark, sea!"

It's going to be fun to write up a guide to this formula because I will have probably 30 or more variations to draw on, looking at all the little twists and innovations each author brings to their version of the story.