Hand picked by our Panel of Experts the IndigoKids Recommends program offers book suggestions designed to help you find the perfect book easily and confidently. Olivia is one of those rare picture books that introduces you to someone brand new and exciting and quite familiar at the same time. Olivia is a young piglet with a positively heroic supply of energy and imagination - she can occupy herself with just about anything and has a copycat brother named Ian whom she feels she must keep in line, being the sagacious elder sister that she is. Spare but delightfully expressive pencil and charcoal illustrations are embellished with fire-engine red in appropriate spots, especially in Olivia's clothing - she's quite a little fashionista, who cannot get dressed in the morning without trying on everything from tutus to turtlenecks. (She even manages to get her entire body into one leg of what we assume are her mother's pantyhose.) Olivia is also very clever - from her mother's instruction on creating basic sandcastles, Olivia expands on the technique to craft an impressive scale model of the Empire State Building. Her creativity is not limited to sculpture, though. Olivia is a brilliant dancer (when she should be napping), a Jackson Pollock protegée (whose work earns her a time out) and a voracious reader (she haggles with her mother to get three bedtime stories instead of one). As she finally floats off to sleep, she is a scintillating diva à la Maria Callas. Olivia is simultaneously every energetic child you've ever known and a force unto herself. As she and her mother say goodnight, parents everywhere will smile at the familiar expression of affection that passes between them. Ages 3-7. | Olivia by Ian Falconer, Picture Books | Indigo Chapters