Olga da Polga is a fictional guinea pig, who is the heroine of a BBC television series for CBeebies and a series of books for children. The books were originally written by Michael Bond and published between 1971 and 2002. Unlike Bond's more famous character, Paddington Bear, Olga is a teller of tall tales in the style of Baron Munchausen. The typical plot of each story is that something fairly ordinary happens to Olga, and she gives her animal friends a wildly exaggerated version of events, subsequently revealed to be untrue by what the humans say. Bond's books were memorably illustrated by Danish artist Hans Helweg, who was also well known for his "pulp fiction" covers for Pan paperbacks. His illustrations are still strongly associated with Olga, although later editions have used different imagery including artwork by Catherine Rayner for Usborne. Olga was named after the Bond family's real guinea pig. In 2014, Guardian journalist Michelle Pauli met Olga number six.

Television series

In 2022, the BBC commissioned 13 episodes of a live-action TV series of Olga da Polga for CBeebies, featuring Julie Wilson Nimmo and Greg Hemphill. A second series aired in 2023 on the channel.

Books

Chapter books

Picture books

Characters