Olivia is like Oprah at this point: she’s everywhere. She has a web presence, a TV show, even a cookie-making kit. So maybe it’s silly to be writing about a character who is so well known. But the original “Olivia” is kind of like “Wicked”–it’s popular for good reasons.
One of the greatest reliefs of graduating from board books is that the characters in the books you’re reading occasionally have personalities. Up until now, the characters in Zadie’s books have behaved as you’d expect them to: “Vincent stayed up late and felt very tired,” or “I’m having some milk…yummy!” I’m not sure if board books are written this way out of an utter lack of creativity, or out of the limitations of the format, or whether it’s actually just good to expose babies to the norms of human emotions. Whatever the reason, it feels fantastic to moving beyond the “Baby happy/Baby sad” kind of thing to the plucky, smug, imaginative antics of Olivia. She fights naps and bedtime. She imagines herself to be an architect, a dancer, a painter. She’s willful, loving, and completely charming.
One of our favorite part of the book is a Richard Scarry-esque two-page spread showing Olivia trying on all her clothes. The text is simple (“Olivia gets dressed. She has to try on everything.”) but there is a lot to look for. Zadie loves to try to find Olivia in her bathing suit, or her turtleneck, or with her backpack. Some of the concepts (e.g. wanting to be left alone) might not be familiar to toddlers yet, but others, like confronting rules about where and when one can paint, are. And with that, I’m going to attempt to scrub the green crayon marks off of our oven door.
