Olive's Ocean,by Kevin Henkes
Genre:Realistic Fiction
Awards:Newberry Honor
Rating: 4 stars
The book starts when a girl in Maria's class gets killed in a car crash. The girl's name was Olive. One day,Maria gets a page from Olive's diary. Olive thinks that Maria was the nicest girl in the class. Soon after,Maria goes to her Grandmother's house near the ocean. She does this every year,but some things seem different. Maria tries to have fun,but she can't get Olive out of her mind.
I paraphrased the paragraph above.Sure, Maria thinks about Olive once or twice during the story,but the real plot seems to be about family troubles and a crush on one of the boys across the street. I thought that this could be a slightly sad novel about how Maria's best friend,Olive was killed in a car crash and she now has only remnants of her friend though a diary. Not the case. Maria barely knows Olive's name,and she gets one page of the diary.This was a good book,just not what I thought it was about.
My Award: Biggest Misnomer
Look for the next post: Double Identity
