The Pigs Are Alright

IAN FALCONER'S OLIVIA BLOSSOMS INTO STARDOM

It's possible that the English saying "Dogs look up to us; cats look down at us; but pigs treat us as equals" does not apply to Ian Falconer's children'sbook heroine, Olivia the pig. After all, here is a little blob of porcine wonderfulness who longs to be the next Callas or Pavlova and who always blossoms in front of an audience. No, Olivia may be a pig who's a little more equal than the others. More equal, and thus more prone to comeuppance. In the third Olivia book, Olivia ... and the Missing Toy (Anne Schwartz Books/Atheneum), Olivia is forced to endure that most abject of all childhood miseries: doll-based unpleasantness. "I wanted to do a thriller for the three-to-eight set," says author and illustrator Falconer, 44, who, having once been David Hockney's assistant, has spent his subsequent non-Olivia hours illustrating 20 covers for The New Yorker and designing sets and costumes for the New York City Ballet and the San Francisco Opera, among other places. Indeed, "thriller" may capture the tone, but, to take the broader view of the Olivia canon, this new installment is Falconer's Mansfield Park— Olivia is more acted upon than actor, and thus shorn of some of the character's delightful expediency ("Move the cat") in the series' first two volumes. However, Falconer nimbly fills in the gap by plunging his heroine into a scarifying nighttime sequence, lit only by lightning and candelabra, that is sure to excite; indeed, younger readers may aspirate their pacifiers.

HENRY ALFORD