Olive's Ocean

Olive's Ocean

Kevin Henkes

*****

I've finished reading a book called 'Olive's Ocean' by Kevin Henkes. I chose this book from the library because this book was recommended by my friend. It was at the 'Recommended books' section and it even won the Newbery Medal! I find myself into Newbery Medal books because I know that there was a good reason that it won the medal. The front cover of this book looks boring but Mrs. Hodgeson (the librarian) said it's not a good idea to choose a book by it's front cover.

The main character, Martha, got a letter from her friend Olive's mother. As she read through the letter, she felt very astonished because her classmate, Olive turned out to be dead by getting crashed by a car. She didn't know Olive that much and didn't talk to her but she regretted about it.

When the day finally came for summer vacation, Martha and her family went to her grandmother, Godbee's house to stay with her. Martha's big brother Vince, has friends by the last name of Manning very near Godbee's house. Martha started to get interested by one of the Manning boys called Jimmy and they had dinner together at the Manning's house. The more she spent time with Jimmy, she liked Jimmy more and more every time. However, when Jimmy kisses her and it was recording, Martha got very mad and she got even more mad when she kissed her for a bet. The whole thing changed: as time passed, she started disliking Jimmy and he started to like a younger boy called Tate.

One day, when Martha was at the beach with her little sister Lucy, she almost drowned at the river and saw Jimmy holding hands with another girl, giggling with each other. Martha remembered that Olive's favourite place to be was at the Pacific Ocean so she filled a bottle up with Pacific Ocean water and decided to give it to Olive's mother.

It was the day when Martha had to return home again. When she was just about to leave, Tate ran all the way from his house and gave a little bag to her. It included a video tape that Jimmy pictured Martha kissing him and a note. The note made Martha feel very happy because he admitted that he was the one who liked Martha.

Martha returned home and went to Olive's mother's house to give her the bottle but unluckily, her mother moved to another place.

After I read this book for over an hour, I felt very proud of myself that I had made a very good book choice and understood the book perfectly. I think this is a fascinating book and I know that the reader would like this book. The author also did a very nice job introducing new vocabulary and to my surprise, it had our class vocabulary words like 'vast, idly, overwhelming"and more.

I recommend this book to everyone and I'm sure they'll like it. I would give this book5 stars out of 5.