Porcine Espionage! Olivia The Spy by Ian Falconer

ONE AFTERNOON OLIVIA HEARD HER MOTHER TALKING TO HER AUNT.

"I HAD JUST FINISHED CLEANING THE KITCHEN WHEN OLIVIA DECIDED TO MAKE HERSELF A SMOOTHIE--A BLUEBERRY SMOOTHIE," HER MOTHER WAS SAYING.

Olivia remembers that episode all too well. Her mother warned her not to fill the container all the way to the top and Olivia had responded with a smart-alecky comeback.

"MOMMY, I KNOW HOW TO USE THE BLENDER!"

RRRRRR! SPLAT! SPLAT! There goes Mommy's clean kitchen!

But when Mommy tries to give her some advice about loading the washing machine, she gets the same line.

"I KNOW HOW TO USE THE WASHING MACHINE."

Uh-huh. Daddy's white underwear is washed with Olivia's socks and comes out pink. Experience keeps a dear school, as Ben Franklin said, but Olivia refuses to learn to listen to Mommy.

That's when Olivia's covert eavesdropping on Mommy's conversation brings her up short.

"OH, I WISH THERE WAS SOME PLACE I COULD SEND HER UNTIL SHE LEARNS SOME SENSE," MOMMY LAMENTS, "LIKE A MILITARY SCHOOL..."

Olivia's supersized ears stand straight up! What is Mommy planning? Olivia instantly goes into secret agent mode, sneakily listening in at keyholes, disguising herself under a lampshade and camouflaging herself as a zebra rug, even poking her snout out of a mousehole to listen in on her parents. And what she hears puts her on red alert. A military school? An institution? Is Mommy really considering incarceration for her wayward daughter?

And then Olivia overhears something that pins her overactive ears back.

"OH, THAT'S THE PERFECT PLACE TO TAKE HER!" DADDY IS SAYING.

Is Olivia headed for the hoosegow? Sadly she begins packing, expecting to be sent packing to boarding school, or worse, prison, in Ian Falconer's new book, Olivia the Spy (Atheneum Press, 2017), filled with Falconer's trademark artwork, dark charcoaled outlines filled with contrastingly bright colors set, spot-art style, against white pages, showing off his character's silly surveillance capers in illustrations that will keep readers giggling, right down to what Olivia fears is her long last ride to the lockup.

Olivia is back, after her long and various stay in the easy reader/paperback genre, still her famously self-absorbed self in this new, full-format picture book. As usual, it's all about her, as her intensive spell of surveillance causes a misunderstanding that gives Olivia a well-earned comeuppance, followed by a happy ending arranged by her long-suffering but kind parents, but one with Olivia still up to her usual tricks. In a final, unforeseen twist, Falconer gives his readers the last laugh at his self-important pig. As Kirkus Reviews puts it piquantly, "That irrepressible porker is back." Yay!