Olivia

I have thought about placing here my Olivia thoughts, so slowly today as I goof around working at school it'll get on this post. Many know that I teach through stories, all kinds, all the time. Literature is everywhere in my teaching room. Part of why I put it on this blog is to show how it functions in my 'head'. This character, Olivia, was "very popular' this year in my room and we ended our year re-reading all her stories and each writing an adventure for her to have.
I sent them home, they were hilarious. I will do on-line next year but our network was so slow, couldn't this year. We are getting new infrastructure. Copper.

I always think this kind of follow up to write your own, or what I now call in 1st grade "FanFic" is extremely good. I'll tell you why. To do this well you have to capture the tone of the author, the pacing, you have to "get" the motivations and the structures. In short you re-read a hell of a lot. And as a teacher this has value. one of my best projects every year is the FanFic as well as the 'Hidden Diary of_______.' My daughter Sylvia began writing like this very young. She could write in the style of so many. And she would do this to amuse herself. Or amuse me too. In this way having "fun". And so I introduce to 1st graders several times these derivative processes because some are learning ways to go home and have some "fun" writing the stories "never told". Permission granted to have characters live out your scenarios.

Right now my daughter is highly engaged with a show called "House". I'd never seen it but cleaning my room she showed me a couple episodes this week as she ordered herself the show as her graduation present to herself. On DVD. A season. She loves it. She is writing up my medical history as a House episode. I have to struggle with this a bit as that history is hard....but she is actually re-processing this this way. Me too I guess. And that has value. As we all are because Sylvia is sharing out possible plots. Well let me show you something she sent me first...which became conversations...with everyone .....

The basic outlines Mom for a House episode always go like this:

The Patient - You, haha.
How House Gets Involved - Something interesting that would cause him to take the case, or another person advocating for the patient, or Cuddy makes him, etc.
Mis-diagnoses - There are usually at least two, and often the treatments cause a worsening in the condition. Or additional complications in the disease progress, etc. Anything interesting.
The privacy invasion/major ethical breach - There's always one, either among House and his staff or of the patient.
The final diagnosis - Do we have one of these yet? Haha, something--or two somethings--that will fit all the symptoms neatly. And usually it's undiagnosable and they have to diagnose it by treating it. Usually.
The clinic patients - One or two per episode, people in the walk-in clinic with various ailments. I can invent these without too much trouble.
The drama - Always something going on between House/Wilson or Chase/Cameron/Foreman or House/Cuddy. This, I can invent too.


Fill me in on the complicated details of your medical history--the ones that could fit into a 42-minute episode, anyway (some of them can be backstory) and I'll write it. ;P

I will. Umm....soon.

Anyway back to Miss Olivia. Olivia is completely centered on Olivia, a being so alive with her now that in some ways I think is this a tiny feature of something many lose? Is this what being fully present is? She is so optimistic, so happily thinking up her "ideas" so much the way I run my classes. I build Olivia' I think. Want to. Often my immigrant kids are so shy, reticent, unable to be fully there in part due to language, poverty and some burdens they carry. It's quite a conundrum. Olivia for me stands as a character acting on things, engaged, inventing, creating. And to some extent I need to name it, to teach it. Or at least when they are in my classes I am thankful if I have these catalysts , if not a little " worn out". So here are my notes around this first book, which is not the first in the series, nor my favorite, but I do like it.



Olivia And The Missing Toy
Ian Falconer

I'm not Olivia but I do know how to feel and look ridiculous, and get very fixated. For awhile. I have lost my car, not that it is a favorite toy, but I have. I have lost my car within the last two weeks actually. For three days. I forgot where I parked it. Again. You'd think my husband could solve all these things, but he can't. He could try, that's enough to say you care. Trying is not saying, 'I have to go' into the cell and hanging up. That is definitely not trying. Because I'm complex you might have to deal with interesting problems. And you don't I hear that just everyday. If the car could be found easily, I could do that. (Partly he could try thinking like me, as a kind of exercise in empathy)

So, yes, Olivia has terrific imagination too. Verve, stamina, excitement, enthusiasm, observation, taste, imagination, vision, potential. Gall, gristle, guts, wants, demands, hard-headedness,(whatever the opposite of introspection is), and just plain "nerve".

Her books seem consistently great. It's really all about if you tire with the same format told in new ways. Many do, tire. Hey Olivia is not dragging around in these books as if she suddenly was in a Patricia Polaco story. "ooh Grandmother I so worship the old ways, get out the quilt", no that's not really Olivia, but she'd definitely consider a play about it all if a famine of plague hits all the better. In my favorite of her stories about the circus she answers the teacher asking about a tall-tail (tale) she just told, that it is "mostly true". I love that her feelings and her truth are so connected. Mostly. My husband finds it "annoying at best." And that is "mostly true".

Olivia becomes a wonderful vehicle for talking to children this age as I teach. Relating to children everyday, kind of propelled me back into their state of being in "the world". Picasso-lites take note. Ask any teacher, or better afflicted child of teacher or friend, spouse etc. the down-side or do some looking at a few teachers in their homes/lives. I bet mostly they are living/relating in the ages of the kids they teach.. I knew a junior high teacher who liked to "grade" and score her husband. It's part of the life. (Which is why you can't think of anyone you'd less want at your parties than the teacher down the street. Way to introduce some rigidity and transform a party into "one of those". ) Opps, off topic. Opps.
So I'm saying Olivia is wonderfully young and spontaneous and if you want to learn how to do this teach 4 to 7 year olds for 25 years. Live today. And I'm kind of wanting now some Popeye's Chicken.

Olivia books are complex. No, not really. They are a series of emoting piglet dramas connected in a stream of her on-going consciousness. And they resemble dramatic young children, while slipping in references to the eastern "culture" norms of those that are way liberal chic. It's hard not to love that if one is.....
1) dramatic
2) parent of a dramatic, educated and pretty affluent gifted child
3) a New Yorker subscriber
4) fond of eastern Am. cultur
5) pretty happy with a bold female character.

I tend to have affinities in these directions so a book like Olivia ...and The Missing Toy appeals to my 1st grade teacher dramatic read a loud, which I called U Pick It, though it grows boring to say so, sometimes. In fact we are completing a cycle through all the Olivia's. Quite fun, in some ways. At times....perhaps...thought provoking. And as I think more recently maybe a way I am inflicting some of my value systems. But let's not this minute get too self reflective. Just stay self-referential.

First a story summary for The Missing Toy, Olivia is inventing life in her moment, her Mom aids and abets this, she wants a red soccer jersey her favorite color, the team is green. Mom makes it after Olivia makes it clear she wants to be One Of A Kind. Mom, of course, takes a little time to sew, Olivia gets bored, loses her toy....and demands of all in her life right now it be FOUND. Rest of story to be READ by the reader as I DO NOT WISH TO SPOIL IT.

So......what this story finally triggered was, Dad always is just reading the paper and suggests, aware a tempest is brewing, he can buy her another toy, whatever she wants, earning him FAVORITE parent status. Oh.

Mom is the busy sewing abetter, with a great look on her face most of the time.
Hey, I look up and say, maybe that's MY PARENTING he is talking about.
This is the revelation that the months are bringing me as I'm reading, and I'm actually paying a guy $200 a session to get to what Olivia showed in a few really excellent drawings, go figure. My 'benign neglect' parenting, while doing EVERYTHING for my kids even including allowing them the ice cream breakfast. Or maybe Popeye's Chicken...humm.
"But look," I say, "This is the culture of my people, read this Olivia. See." "Sarah", he says so certainly, "Parents can and do set reasonable limits and even be a bit of an ass about it. " Really? I think I'll try it. And so I do. I tell my children, I will not be able at 10:30 PM with 5 seconds notice, to make each teacher, 25 in all, the traditional two dozen cookies each bag, plus a framed keepsake Mom drawing this year, as I am about to drop dead. "What?" they say huffing off to bed thinking they gave me plenty of notice for the next morning. At 2:30 AM I am up starting late the cookies because.....well.....after all they really are unique in all the world and isn't it wonderful they want to do this for the teachers? And so they get the cookies. This is my Mothering.



Perhaps you would like this book as much as I do if you need to be thinking generally about parenting your kids. None of mine really is Olivia, not so dramatic. That, I'm afraid is MY ISSUE. And it really does wear others out. Which is sad. And I'm sorry.

But......I'm wanting a boy character like this, maybe one for younger kids like Artemis Fowl or .....I am tired of only dramatic female books when teaching. So I'm hoping that Olivia's brothers get tails of their own.

Cool stories.