Reviews: (by author)

Falconer, Ian. Olivia and the Missing Toy. New York: Atheneum, 2003. $16.95. ISBN 0-689-85291-6.

Olivia remains vivacious and uncompromised in this slice of her young life--her devotion to her toy, its mysterious destruction, her hunt for it, and her ultimate reconciliation with the pet dog. To retain the mystery, I will say no more.

Olivia reminds me of Frances, Russell Hoban's little badger girl, who experiences things so keenly, so unamelioratedly, so egocentrically. As her mother sews her a new soccer shirt, for example, it's Olivia who gets exhausted from waiting. Falconer's language is almost as enjoyable as Russell Hoban's, who has an exquisite ear for childhood expression. However, Olivia is more interestingly illustrated than the Frances books were by Lillian Hoban. She did a fine job depicting a normal family of what happened to be badger/people. Falconer takes his illustrations a light year beyond through his brilliant use of contrast—with a lot of bright white, his placement of objects on the page, and his integration of photographic reality, especially in backgrounds, with the comically drawn pigs who comprise Olivia's family. In the Frances books, Hoban depicted a lot of emotion in her characters, but Falconer, in loose pen and ink and the occasional well-placed color, depicts the repertoire of childhood emotion with abandon. The repertoire includes manipulating daddy, yelling at the top of her lungs, intimidating her little brothers, dressing the family cat in a polka-dot diaper, and so on-- through the really charming last page, in which all involved, including the self-involved heroine, are redeemed. Excellent Read-aloud book—allows the reader to ham it up.

Alida Allison, January 2004

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