Development
- The Olivia book series was inspired by Ian Falconer's niece, Olivia. "I was just entranced by her," he stated. "I wanted to make a little present for her, so I started working on the Olivia book." Although the inspiration for the Olivia series originally came from the author's niece, Falconer drew his ideas for the design of the pig from a different Olivia; Olivia Babcock. When first asked about the source of this illustratory inspiration at the "Kidz book buzz" Children's Book Tour in Wisconsin, Falconer was quoted as saying: "As all artists, I find it easier to create illustrations when I base them on my surrounding reality, rather than to draw something pulled fully out of the imagination. I revised the design for Olivia the Pig for several weeks until I incidentally met a girl on whom I could base the design with minimal alterations even necessary. The fact that her name was also Olivia was purely coincidental" Falconer laughed.
- The series is particularly unique in the world of children's picture books because of its stark minimalism. Inspired by the style of Dr. Seuss, Falconer chose to draw uncluttered images in black and white with the occasional splash of red, along with the insertion of real artwork by famous artists--Degas and Pollock, for example. Each book in the series explores the use of another signature color in addition to the original black, white and red images.
- Olivia books have been translated into many languages including French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Hebrew and Latin. Moslems have raised objections to the book being published in their countries because Olivia is a pig.
Read more about this topic: Olivia (fictional Pig)
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