One of my favorite author's died this month. I really didn't think of Ian Falconer as one of my favorite authors until I saw the notice that he passed away. Ian was the author of children's series Olivia about a feisty, energetic, and precocious little pig.
The book was originally written as a gift for his niece, but a publisher saw it and the rest is history. The book nails the paradox of parenting preschoolers, who can be brilliant and beautiful and maddening and messy, all at the same moment. Olivia sings from a book of "40 Very Loud Songs" while dreaming she is Maria Callas. She paints her room in the style of Jackson Pollock. She dances like a ballerina in a Degas painting.
"I'm not sleepy," says Olivia at nap time while jumping on her bed. Her mother is exhausted.
My friend Michelle gave Claire-Adele a copy of Olivia and a stuffed Olivia pig for her third second or third birthday. I cried when I read it. I would say the book reminded me of Claire-Adele--which it did, but retrospect, the book touched an emotional nerve of the mayhem and magic of being a child.
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