Regarding Observations about
Olivia Kidney Stops For No One
By Ellen Potter
On my first reread of this book I realized something odd. Olivia Kidney is, judging from the cover, a freckly twelve-year-old girl with thick ginger blonde hair in two ponytails, with cheery smile and crystal blue eyes. But it seems the book would not have you believe so. If not for the cover illustration, on which even Olivia is not portrayed clearly (she is about 3 inches tall on it) Olivia Kidney could have been a girl with black, blonde, brunette, or red hair, with blue, green, violet, black or hazel eyes and any complexion anybody could think of (Imagine an olive-tanned red-haired and violet-eyed Olivia!). It appears that if you write an illustration book, particularly a colored picture book, you tend to leave out what your character looks like. Really I suppose this author is so POMPOUS that she infers you will ‘get it’ after looking at the cover for five seconds and considers this a colored picture book (there isn’t a single picture in it save for the cover)! I didn’t, at first. In fact, if the author did not tell you that Frannie/ Venice’s hair was NOT butter-blonde or any kind of blonde, I would’ve assumed the girl was Frannie! I’m just saying maybe the author relies too much on guesswork and this could potentially go havoc.
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