School Library Journal Review
Gr 3--7--Twelve-year-old Olympia is a budding artist who has many places to turn for inspiration. Her mother repurposes found objects into sculptures in one corner of their SoHo loft, and her father and his business partner, Apollo, restore old paintings on the floor below. Ollie's life is turned upside down when her father mysteriously disappears one night and her mother's depression keeps her in bed. Ollie confides in her friends, Alex and Richard, but it soon becomes clear the situation is too large for the kids to handle themselves. Themes of friendship, mental health, love for animals, and artistic creativity are woven into this coming-of-age novel. Narrator Taylor Meskimen's excellent pacing and wide vocal range allow each of the many characters in Olympia's world to come to life for listeners. Even listeners who have never visited New York City will easily picture the high-rise buildings, bustling streets, and airy lofts Olympia frequents. VERDICT Featuring authentic characters and deep insights into the creative lifestyle, this debut is the perfect mix of mystery and realistic fiction. Recommend it to creative students, especially those who love drawing and making art.--Anne Bosievich, Friendship Elementary School, Glen Rock, PA
Publisher's Weekly Review
It's spring 1981, and Ollie, 12, is trying her best to keep her sculptor mother's latest depressive episode a secret. Her mom hasn't gotten out of bed since a week after Ollie's art restorer father fled mysteriously to France in the middle of the night, leaving behind a cryptic note for Ollie alone. The cautious girl declines to share either piece of information with the sympathetic grown-ups in her life, including her father's business partner, the dependable Apollo, who teaches her about mixing pigments-and with whom her father quarreled about an enigmatic wooden statue before he left. Ollie herself is an observant and talented sketch artist, and her creative sensibility shines through in Murphy's spot illustrations and the lovely first-person narrative (a building is said to be "wearing its own fire escape like the hard jewelry on the girls outside the bars on St. Mark's Place"). Tucker skillfully balances themes of mental illness, friendship, and creativity under tough circumstances in her memorable debut. The vibrant, eccentric characters are authentic, the early-1980s SoHo setting is clearly wrought (rich with descriptive details such as fad diets and artist-in-residence lofts), and the Konigsburg-tinged art mystery satisfies. Ages 8-12. Author's agent: Faye Bender, the Book Group. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Sixth-grader Olympiacalled Ollie by her best friends, Richard and Alexis left fending for herself when her father disappears and her mother experiences a major depressive crisis.A vividly depicted urban landscape firmly establishes this novel in the SoHo of 1981, where Ollie lives in a converted industrial loft and picks up packs of cigarettes and Tab at a store on Broadway for her mom. A talented artist, Ollie's mom has stopped getting out of bed since Ollie's father, an art restorer, embarked on a clandestine trip to France a week before. At first glance, this elegantly nostalgic and leisurely paced story, sparingly illustrated with delicate pencil drawings, is a mystery involving a valuable wood carving on which Ollie's dad and his business partner, Apollo, were working. However, there are so many other themes at playincluding the intricacies of friendships, the pain of living with depression, and art's ability to create meaning out of life's ordinary and sometimes-difficult circumstancesthat it defies simple genre categorization. A host of honest, flawed, deeply sympathetic characters that are poignant and funny are at once unique and familiar. Ollie, her parents, and Alex seem to be white by default, Apollo grew up in Poland, and Richard is a black boy of Haitian heritage. There is realistic ethnic diversity reflected in secondary and background characters.Lovely, sad, hopeful, and memorable. (Historical fiction. 9-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ollie's parents are artists. Her mother is an innovative sculptor; her father, along with his friend and partner, Apollo, does meticulous restoration work. But to Ollie's distress, neither of them are present at the moment. Her father has disappeared, perhaps to France with his new girlfriend, on some obscure mission. Her mother, as she did once before, has taken to her bed, too depressed to eat, wash, or focus on her daughter's worries. That leaves Ollie, an artist in her own right, free to roam a pregentrified Manhattan Soho with friends Alex and Richard, seeking clues to her father's whereabouts. The story isn't much of a mystery in the traditional sense. By the time readers discover what's happened to him, key elements about his disappearance are almost forgotten. As Ollie herself notes about mysteries, the clues in books are all ""tidy arrows pointing toward a logical conclusion."" But not in meandering reality. What this is, however, is a brilliant mediation on the artistic life, the way shapes and color infuse perception, how concentration can lead to illumination, and how creation is a gift available to all in myriad forms. These messages don't present heavily, they shimmer, mostly because Tucker's writing is exquisite and as precise as brushstroke. A remarkable debut.--Ilene Cooper Copyright 2019 Booklist
