The Greedy Python

A snake eats an increasingly unlikely amount and increasingly unlikely forms of prey. Just weird enough to work.

And in addition to introducing carnivorism and different types of animals to little ones, it can be a counting book if you want.

We love this huge board book! We borrowed it from the library and liked it so much that we searched it out online and purchased it. The format is great for babies that want to sit in your lap and turn the pages. The illustrations are lovely, as expected. The story is bizarre and charming. The snake eats a number of animals then spits them all up after making himself sick by overeating. My daughter loved this book at around 7-8 months but has been less tolerant of books without flaps or textures now at nearly a year old. She still picks it out sometimes to read, and I'm sure she will regain interest in it as she gets older too.

"The Greedy Python" is a fun story about a hungry python that swallows a handful of animals along his journey. The descriptive language is a useful aspect of this book because it engages the reader in what's happening. It's also in rhyme which enhances the flow of the story. "And when they all began to kick, the snake began to feel quite sick." The illustrations are another key component of this story. The theme of the books is evident through the illustrations of the colorful animals. When the snake has eaten all the animals, we see him huge and full. The big idea of this story is being patient and waiting for good things to come.

In this humorous story about manners, respect, and friendship, a greedy python eats every creature he comes across in the jungle. From a tiny mouse to an enormous elephant, the devoured animals eventually befriend one another in the belly of the snake, where they team up and kick the inside of the python until he spits them out. Rather than learning his lesson, the python sticks to his greedy ways. When he spots his own tail and mistakes it for food, he swallows himself and...disappears!
This amusing—and cautionary—tale features Eric Carle’s vivid illustrations and rhyming text that’s been adapted into a Level 1 Ready-to-Read, making it ideal for sharing aloud with emerging readers.

This book is a good example of fantasy because it is impossible for a greedy snake to swallow himself and disappear. The media that Eric Carle is famous for using is collage. He does this by painting paper somewhat randomly, and then cuts the paper to become the snake, elephant, or the sun. This is a really cool way to show the layering and texture of the different pieces of paper, making it look more 3-D.

This book was illustrated by Eric Carle, an illustrator known for his collage style art. The Scholastic Readability Level is PreK-1st grade. The story tells about a python that eats everything in sight greedily. Eventually his greed gets the best of him when he coughed up every animal after feeling sick. Then, he decided to eat what he thought was another animal. It was actually his own tail and he swallowed himself. The moral of this story is that it never pays to be greedy. I would use the story for its moral and the focus on the sequence of animals. I could have the students place the animals in the order that they appeared in the story at the end.

This book has a great lesson in it. This could be used for younger grades such as kindergarten at the beginning of the year to talk about sharing. It could even be used in preschool.