Day 27: Olivia

Olivia is a pig who is good at a lot of things:  singing loudly, building sandcastles, drawing, imagining, and especially wearing people out.  In this playfully silly and delightful story, Ian Falconer creates a lovable character to whom children and parents can easily relate.   Olivia is  independent, charming, clever, witty, precocious, creative, and in many ways embodies all that is fun and wonderfully exhausting about having a child.  She would rather dance around her room than take a nap, or paint her own walls just like Jackson Pollock, and is naturally able to convince her mother to read her three books, not just one, before bed.   Of course, every parent's favorite part is bound to be when Olivia's mother finishes reading that last story and says, "'You know, you really wear me out.  But I love you anyway.'  And Olivia gives her a kiss back and says, 'I love you anyway, too.'"  Perfect, right?  I just love saying that to my son, who, like any good three year old boy, has boundless energy from the time he wakes up until the time he jumps (literally) onto his pillow each night.  And he'll smile that impish grin right back at me and say, "I love you anyway, too."  In his New Yorker style, Falconer's illustrations are also wonderful and eye-catching to the young reader.  Mostly black and white with the occasional splashes of red, his drawings do a fabulous job of portraying Olivia's spunk and spirit.   This is another one of those books that is on my "must own" list, but for now, we'll have to be content renewing it from the library again and again.