SHAI EYNAV/Provided
Candor's Ellen Potter will read from her latest book featuring Olivia Kidney, 7 p.m. Friday at Barnes & Noble.
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What if there was a school you could attend after death to learn a few principles about the afterlife? What if you had to pass through, say, a New York City brownstone after death? It doesn't sound on the surface like the premise for a children's book, maybe something more along the lines of a Stephen King story, unless that book is by children's author Ellen Potter, 41, of Candor.
People die in Potter's young adult novels. That alone is something different. In her first book, young Olivia Kidney was still reeling from the death of her brother Christopher. In her new book, "Olivia Kidney and the Exit Academy" (Philomel Books, $15.99), she is still mourning for (and now channeling) Christopher, but there are a lot of other people dying, too. It may seem odd fare for children's reading, but it all seems natural with Potter's humor and touches of irony.
In her new book, Potter takes the Kidneys (Olivia and her father, George, a building superintendent) to a new building, which has some very strange inhabitants, as was also the case in the old building. Only this time, building owners Ansel and Nora are up to something very peculiar indeed, which might be experimental theater or something much more creepy. Not to give the story completely away, suffice it to say that this book takes imaginative leaps that will have readers (young and old) guessing and second-guessing what the heck is going on until the last pages.
In the new installation of Olivia -- number three is on the way --there are characters who like to row around inside a house in a boat and a person who practices getting attacked by a grizzly bear.
This is the stuff you might imagine if a high imagination were put on steroids.
"I wrote more about the afterlife in this book after many visits to schools where the children told me they were disappointed that when Olivia got to speak to her brother, all he told her about death was it was like a dream," Potter said.
That, her young readers told her, was simply not enough. They wanted to know more. "Olivia Kidney and The Exit Academy" should satisfy them.
As she continues to write about her young heroine, Potter says she is becoming more and more fond of her. "She is a quirky girl, one of those girls nobody notices, yet she has this amazing life," Potter says. She describes her further as a girl "with one foot in the spirit world, a straddler."
As in her first book, Olivia can speak with spirits and contact her dead brother, but in the Exit Academy she can do more than that -- Christopher can actually experience life again through her actions. It is a beautiful idea, and Potter takes it to lovely places -- describing everything from eating a hot dog and riding a skateboard with a sentient eye.
Kids should love this book, not for its macabre-sounding deep story about death, but for its love of all the details about life. Olivia may talk to spirits, but she is still living, and her life keeps getting more interesting all the time.
Potter's first Olivia book, a "Child magazine best book of 2003," also won high praise from Parenting Magazine, Horn Book Magazine and Publisher's Weekly. This one is even riskier and should go even further. For Potter, the best part is seeing the reaction of her readers. "It has been amazing to talk to kids about these books, go to schools and hear what they loved and what they didn't like; it is eye opening."
Ellen Potter will read from "Olivia Kidney and the Exit Academy," 7 p.m. Friday at Barnes & Noble in Ithaca.
Originally published Thursday, June 23, 2005
