American, Ian Falconer is the illustrator responsible for the Olivia books. Olivia is a precocious, hyperactive piglet who tests her mother's patience to its absolute limits. Ian was drawing for The New Yorker and designing sets when his niece, Olivia was born. He was smitten, and decided he wanted to make a little present for her, so started working on a book. It was not published immediately but after some work it was published and became the first of a series of books about Olivia. Ian has based all of the piglet's family on members of his sister's family. The illustrations are particularly uncluttered and they use black and white with splashes of red. The subsequent titles have another colour introduced as well. Olivia has been so successful that she now has a television show and television spin-off book titles. These are not illustrated by Ian Falconer or in his style, but nevertheless keep my young clientele interested in Olivia until Ian's next title comes out. In fact the next title Olivia Goes to Venice is due out at the end of September. It looks somewhat different in its amount of detail and the amount of colour in the illustrations, so I cannot wait to see it.
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