Oliver's Great Loves

Kelly L. Green is the co-editor of the Children’s Literature edition
of the Canadian Book Review Annual.

Eleven-year-old Oliver’s life is filled with great passions. He lives
with his parents in the upper stories of his beloved grandmother’s
house in Montreal, across from Mount Royal and Jeanne Mance Park (the
best park in the world, thinks Oliver). He has splendid friends (the
Vietnamese/Québécois Do family) and definite ambitions. When he shares
with his grandmother his secret desire to become the official
photographer of the Tour de l’Оle bicycle race, amazing things begin
to happen. But the greatest of Oliver’s loves are the gifts he and his
grandmother give each other.

This touching yet tart and unsentimental tale of a very original boy
and his happy, loving family is classed as a “Junior Nature novel.”
Oliver and his friend Frankie Do go camping to make an insect-photograph
collection for a science project (and to impress Maria Pasedano). They
encounter a family of raccoons exploring their cooler. When the Tour de
l’Оle arrives, Montrealers leave their cars at home. Oliver takes a
risk to save a helpless animal. Grandmother spends most of her time
tending her garden. Thus Plourde unobtrusively weaves in the importance
of the natural world as one of the central strands of city-child
Oliver’s life story.

Frances Morgan has done a readable and enjoyable translation of
Plourde’s charming story. Doris Barrette’s black-and-white
illustrations, with their funny angles and people with great big noses,
are just right. Highly recommended.