Olga and the Smelly Thing from
Nowhere. By Elise Gravel. Harper. $12.99.
There are lots and lots of
stories out there about kids who are not very good with other kids, or with
adults, but who are super-good with something else, such as animals. But this
book is not like all the others.
There are lots and lots of
stories out there in which the pictures and text are equally important even
though the works are not exactly graphic novels, being more of a hybrid form in
the Dear Dumb Diary mode. But, again,
this book is not like all the others.
And there are lots and lots
of stories out there where an alien being or otherwise unimaginable creature of
some sort is imagined and turns out
to be very important indeed, or at least very interesting, or very strange, or
some combination of those. But, yet again, this book is not like all the
others.
Why not? Because Elise
Gravel’s Olga and the Smelly Thing from
Nowhere combines elements of all
three of the “lots and lots of stories” designed for preteens, and is
hilarious – as well as slightly, ever so slightly, meaningful.
It all starts with the
unusually weird title, which turns out to refer to a thing that turns up in
Olga’s trash can one day. It smells like the trash, or maybe the trash smells
like it; it is hard to be sure. The thing is the size of a piglet and has pink,
trash-covered fur, plus a long, skinny, rat-like, prehensile tail. It says
nothing but “meh” (constantly) and is terrified of bananas. It is in love with
Olga’s Michael Jackson poster, does not speak Spanish, and does not seem to
want to eat anything – not even Olga’s favorite food, macaroni and cheese with
pickles. Olga and the Smelly Thing from
Nowhere features Olga trying to find out more about the smelly thing: she
is a budding scientist, as she does not hesitate to explain (repeatedly), and her
idol is Jane Goodall. Olga is initially fascinated by the smelly thing, which
she has not yet seen, because she discovers that its poop is “the size of green
peas, and shiny like marbles, but multicolored, like Skittles.” So, yes, there
is a bunch of poop-related stuff here, which is scarcely surprising in an amply
illustrated book for ages 8-12. But Olga’s interest in poop is scientific, not scatological, so there
is purpose to it, all right?
Anyway, Olga – who likes to
wear the same sack-like dress all the time and does not like to wear socks or
shoes – explores the likes and dislikes of the smelly thing, which she dubs
Olgamus Ridiculus (a pretty good name, all things considered), eventually
finding out what it likes to eat (olives, which she discovers while visiting a
store that sells, among other things, tuna flavored toothpaste and transparent
diapers). But Olga fails to discover what the smelly thing actually is, despite
a library trip during which she consults Weird
Animals, Strange Animals, Bizarro Animals, Strange Life Forms, Cute Animals,
and so on. It is during this library visit that Gravel shows her desire to have
Olga and the Smelly Thing from Nowhere
be a bit more than its title and plot indicate: just as there are multiple
references to Jane Goodall in the text, so is there some science in the library
trip – Olga learns about the blobfish, naked mole rat, axolotl, tarsier and
other strange real-world animals (which, however, Gravel’s cartoons show in
not-at-all-real-world ways). True, this is not a major part of the book, but
the underlying current of scientific exploration, which includes Olga using the
scientific method by taking constant notes on the smelly thing and listing and
numbering her observations, makes Olga
and the Smelly Thing from Nowhere a bit more than a pure romp.
Back in the “romp” material,
though, Gravel offers hilarious illustrations of differently shaped dogs
(because Olga decides to take the smelly thing to the dog park), and one of the
funniest pictures in the whole book has Meh (the smelly thing’s name, of
course) – threatened by big dogs – “puffing up like a giant puffer fish” and
making a “FWEEE-EEEEK!” noise that looks as funny as it sounds when you see Meh
making it. Eventually, thanks to Meh, Olga makes friends with some neighborhood
girls she has always disliked – this is another bit of underlying seriousness
in the book – and learns, among other things, that Meh tries to communicate
with flies and only sleeps facing the North Pole. With a combination of ideas,
attributes and attitudes like the one in Olga
and the Smelly Thing from Nowhere, can a sequel about Olga and Meh be far
behind? Young readers will certainly hope the answer is not “meh” but “no.”
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