No Stone Unturned: Olivia Goes to Venice by Ian Falconer

IT WAS TIME FOR SPRING VACATION.

OLIVIA DECIDED THAT SHE AND HER FAMILY OUGHT TO SPEND A FEW DAYS IN VENICE.

"OLIVIA, YOU WON'T BE NEEDING YOUR SNORKEL," SAID HER MOTHER. "OR YOUR FLIPPERS."

"MOTHER, APPARENTLY THE CITY IS OFTEN UNDER WATER AND..."

"OR YOUR WATER SKIS"

Olivia quickly packs up a valise full of her trademark red-and-white-striped dresses. And airport security wands are just another novel adventure for the extroverted Olivia.

AS THEY WENT THROUGH THE AIRPORT, OLIVIA WAS SEARCHED FOR WEAPONS. SHE WAS VERY PLEASED.

In Venice Olivia is in her element. She tours palazzos, feeds the sky-darkening flocks of pigeons in the Piazza San Marco in an hilarious parody of Hitchcock's The Birds, and after getting a snoutful of the Old World charm of the city, soothes her overwhelmed senses with multiple gelatos--so many in fact that the, er, enhanced family nearly swamps their gondola when they see the city by water from the Grand Canal.

"TOURISTS!" MUTTERED THE GONDOLIER. "TOO MANY GELATOS!"

And then it's their last day. Olivia's family has visited all the touted tourist traps in town, and they go back to the Piazza to soak up the scene one last time. But Olivia isn't content with just photos to remember her trip by.

"I MUST HAVE SOMETHING TO REMEMBER VENICE BY. I MUST FIND THE PERFECT SOUVENIR."

Perfume? Olivia hates perfume. Lace? Not very Olivian. Olivia finds nothing among the touristy shops to capture the essence of Venizia. At last she returns proudly to her parents, sipping their espressos, with something heavy in hand.

"ONE OF THE STONES OF VENICE!" SHE EXULTS.

"OLIVIA!!!" SCOLDED HER MOTHER. "IF EVERYONE TOOK A PIECE OF VENICE WITH THEM, THE CITY WOULD FALL DOWN!"

Mother's warning is prophetic. Olivia, who as we know can do nothing in a small way, has apparently chosen the very stone from the bell tower that has kept it upright all these centuries, and as the horrified parents gather up Olivia and her brothers and flee the Piazza, we see the tower crack and crumble and collapse behind them, to the amazement of the sightseers all around. Olivia has definitely left her mark on St. Mark's Square, and Venice will never be the same again!

Ian Falconer's new Olivia Goes to Venice (Atheneum, 2010) succeeds on several levels. It's pure Olivia, brash, self-confident, and always on stage, and to show her off, Falconer sets his detailed and stylized charcoal and gouache drawings boldly against picturesque color photos of the beautiful Venetian landscape. Wry humor turns this tale from a travelogue to a giggle fest of a Grand Tour for the picture book set.

Dark Magic: Murder at Midnight by Avi

The soldiers and Fabrizio carried the coffin into the ancient crypt. The room was cold and damp. It smelled of decay. Though he had seen them before, Fabrizio could not keep his eyes from the great piles of bones and skulls set against the crumbling walls. God keep us from becoming part of these piles, he prayed.

In a literal cloak and dagger historical mystery, a companion book to his popular Midnight Magic, two-time Newbery winner Avi's Murder At Midnight (Scholastic, 2009) takes us to the tiny city-state of Pergamontio, a bastion of medieval ignorance and machination.

Fabrizio is a ten-year-old orphan, precariously holding on to his tenuous position as servant to Mangus the Magician because of the affection and good graces of Signora Mangus. An uneducated rag-pickers' child, Fabrizio believes that his master is a true wizard of the dark arts, although the Maestro, devoted to the study of philosphy, repeatedly tells him that there is no magic in his work, only illusion which he practices only to feed the household. But when a performance in a local tavern results in his arrest for magically producing hundreds of identical handbills advocating treason against the superstitious ruler, Fabrizio knows that, with his mistress away from town, the job of proving his master's innocence is his alone.

Cleverly escaping the executioner himself, Fabrizio forms an alliance with another prisoner whom he frees in his escape, a young girl whose blackened face and arms almost convinces him that she herself is an ally of the Devil. Maria is indeed a devil--a printer's devil--and her family's newly set-up press is the true source of the magically identical copies, and Fabrizio realizes that he and his master are pawns in a power struggle between the king, his power-hungry crown prince Cosimo, and the frightening and manipulative Count Scarazoni.

In a plot which deserves the term "Byzantine," involving murders in underground dungeons, a lonely amoral executioner with a sense of humor, multiple chases through dark tunnels and midnight streets, and many twists of plot, Fabrizio and Maria concoct a precarious plot to free Mangus at his trial in the shadowy underground crypt below the Castello. Using a magician's coffin with a double bottom and a bit of his master's illusionary powers, Fabrizio stage-manages an eerie appearance by Maria, transformed into the figure of death with a good coating of Signora Mangus's pale face powders and armed with freshly printed "magical" copies, hastily run off on the family press, of a document which convinces the impressionable king of the identity of the true conspirator.

In a fast-moving plot replete with improbabilities and heavy with delicious atmosphere, Avi, ever the master storyteller, has concocted a page-turning tale which will keep the reader absorbed and amused by his picaresque protagonist. Fabrizio is indeed a breezy and imaginative hero, a resilient, street-wise improviser, and middle readers will love this brief immersion in the world of early Renaissance intrigue and superstition.