Wherefore art thou Fly Guy read alikes, fa-la-la-la-laaaa lala-la-la

Sing it to the tune of Deck the Halls as you go caroling this holiday season for the most confusion-inducing caroling ever.

May I air a gripe here? I don’t do it that often, so I hope you’ll forgive me, but where the heck are the Fly Guy read alikes?

A student came into the library the other day and asked a simple question – “Do you have any other books like Fly Guy?”

Now, the Fly Guy series is insanely popular, so I’ve received this question before. The problem is, there’s not much that fits. Here are the books that come to mind:

Elephant and Piggie. It has the humor and the basic vocab, but you can’t really say if you like Fly Guy you will definitely like Elephant and Piggie – the two are quite different from a character standpoint.

Squish. This seems like a more direct “If you like Fly Guy, you might like this character”, but there’s a big difference in format and vocabulary.

Poppleton. The tone is too different.

Henry and Mudge. A great series (as everything on this list is), but a Fly Guy read alike? Nope.

Mercy Watson. Another case of difficulty jump.

See what I mean?

The best answer I could come up with was the Max Spaniel series. I think this one fits pretty well, but overall that’s slim pickings.

Now watch as I smoothly transition this gripe into a demand…

The world needs more early readers with very basic vocab and an attention-grabbing main character. I know it ain’t an easy order, but there are some eager young readers out there.

(Thanks to my colleague Niki (@daydreamreader) for hashing out this post in the staff lounge)