Skip to main content

Review: Olivetti

By

 


Olivetti
By Allie Millington
New York: Feiwel and Friends. 2024. 249 pages.

A typewriter's life is not always as easy as it looks. Sure it sits on a desk a lot of the time and it appears to be doing nothing but the stories that have been typed from their keys are important and inspiring. A typewriter's job is to keep memories alive and Olivetti just happens to be such a typewriter who sits on the desk of Beatrice Brindle. He can remember everything that was typed on him and he feels strongly that "memories are like heartbeats. They keep things alive. They make us who we are." 

Olivetti and young Ernest Brindle, who is a quiet, shy boy who loves reading the Oxford English Dictionary, work together to tell their story. In alternating narration, Olivetti and Ernest try to solve the mysterious disappearance of Beatrice, Ernest's mother and Olivetti's owner.  Ernest feels like it's his fault that his mother disappeared and he makes it his quest to find her. Along the way he finds two allies who help him, a girl named Quinn, who likes to go dumpster diving and Olivetti, his mother's typewriter. The search for Beatrice takes the friends all over town as they look for clues. Olivetti's job is to type out everything Beatrice ever typed on him. While Quinn and Ernest then take those typed pages and look for clues. Working together the three friends begin to piece together the mystery of what happened to Beatrice. 

This sweet, powerful story is perfect for older middle grade readers, but beware, you may finish the book and find yourself wanting your very own typewriter.




Memories are like heartbeats. They keep things alive. They make us who we are.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Funny Farm by Mark Teague 2009

By Anonymous
There are things I liked about Mark Teague's newest book, Funny Farm , and things I didn't like. Where should I start? I'll do the "didn'ts" first. The illustrations show animals personified. Well, some of the animals are. The main characters, Edward, and his farm family relatives, all dogs, are humanized. They stand upright, do farm chores, eat at a table, wear clothes, knit (yes, with paws) and sleep in beds. Most everybody else on and around the farm, who are also animals, act like animals. They are outside, roll in mud, live in the barn, and require care from their owners. It struck me the most on the page spread where there are pigs playing in puddle in the rain and Edward, a black and white boxer, watches from inside the house. I thought "You're a dog! Go play with them!" But, alas, he can't, seeing as how he goes through his entire visit to the farm wearing a suit and red bow tie. Another picture that bothered me was the maple syrup pa...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester 2008

By Anonymous
J Fiction 328 pages I almost didn't finish this book. I got to Chapter 4, and was just about ready to quit (a kind of slow story about a girl, name of Piper McCloud, who discovers she can fly, parents freak out, she becomes a social outcast, yadda, yadda) but suddenly, right there in Chapter 4, the story takes a sharp turn and becomes really interesting . Piper finds herself in the company of others like her, but not "fliers", and under the care and authority of Dr. Hellion. I won't even tell you any more. Read this book. Forester does a great job of keeping you wondering who's the good guy and who's the bad? Piper is a likeable, strong, endearing character that girl readers will enjoy. But don't NOT give it to boys! The main male character is an extremely intelligent young man who is one of the ones you wonder about . . . good or bad? This is a good one, well worth your time.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more