I first saw "Olive's Ocean" on a bookshelf in a sixth-grade classroom and felt intrigued by it. But with whatever task I had at hand, I soon forgot about it. Years later, I remembered the book, looked it up and decided to read it, even though it was technically a children's book and I was already in college.
Absolutely worth it. Brilliant. Beautiful.
The book is centered around Martha Boyle, a twelve year-old girl whose life experiences a significant turn with a note from a former classmate and a family trip to Cape Cod. Martha knew Olive Barstow, and even though they weren't really friends, she was still shocked when she heard that Olive had been hit by a car and died. She is reminded of, and further jarred by, the incident when Olive's mother comes to her with a page from Olive's journal. From this entry, Martha discovered that Olive wanted three things: she wanted to be friends with Martha, to visit the ocean and to be a writer.
When Martha gets to Cape Cod, she is confronted with family problems and a crush on Jimmy Manning, one of the five Manning boys who visit the same area as Martha's family every summer. During her visit, Martha grows especially close to her grandmother Godbee, and tells her all about the feelings she won't tell anyone else in her family about. All the while, she thinks about Olive, and finds inspiration in her.
Martha wants to be a writer too, and hopes to tell the rest of her family before school starts back. She does quite a bit of growing up as the story progresses, and the way Henkes captures these particular moments in Martha's life is absolutely beautiful. He shows us what it is like to be a twelve year-old on the cusp of puberty and the middle child stuck in a sometimes complicated family. Henkes also paints a wonderfully accurate picture of how it feels to like someone at such a young age, and how intimidating it can be to realize what you want to be in life so young, and in the middle of such changes.
Even though Olive does not have any actual dialogue, her character is manifested in the story in such a way that gives powerful insight into the pain experienced by kids who are bullied and left out. Olive was the new kid, an outsider, and was treated as so from her first day at school until the day she died, just a few months later. She is portrayed as a lonely, quiet young girl who was afraid to speak up. One of her next-door neighbors even called her a "Lonely Little Olive Pit", because she never had any friends to play with. Martha often heard and saw people making fun of Olive, but she never chose to speak up. She feels so close to Olive with the page from her journal, yet so far as she realizes Olive is truly gone, and she will never be able to be her friend or figure out why Olive wanted to be hers. It makes me think a lot about the book "Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher, except that "Thirteen Reasons Why" deals with teenagers, and "Olive's Ocean" is centered mostly around a twelve year-old.
I read online that "Olive's Ocean" was a banned and challenged book for years. While I understand that death and bullying are heavy topics to read about, that doesn't mean we should prevent kids (and even adults) from reading about them. Yes, I wouldn't recommend that a seven year-old read this book unless they are very mature, considering that there is a little bit of strong language and just one sexual reference. But you're probably fine reading this from the fifth grade up. The strong language is actually pretty brief, and the sexual reference is so brief I can barely remember it, so it's hard to see why this book was so challenged for so long.
Going back to the book itself, I'm amazed at how Henkes paints such an intricate portrait of the life of an adolescent girl through such simple language. Perhaps my point of view is conditioned by the fact that I read this book at nineteen instead of eleven. But looking back on my own life when I was twelve, I find that the snapshots of this age given to us by Henkes are heartbreakingly lucid. Martha feels left out of, and often overwhelmed by, her own family. Her younger sister is constantly in need of care and attention, while her older brother is a rambunctious thirteen year-old who nearly always gets his way. Their parents have some troubles in the story, and Martha wonders at one point whether her father is tired of their family and just wants to leave them all. She wants to hide her feelings for Jimmy Manning from everyone except Godbee, knowing there is a risk that her brother will mess something up. All the while, Martha thinks about writing, and starts a novel inspired by Olive, as she confronts the question of what it means to be a writer and to have feelings for an older boy.
During her trip to Cape Cod, Martha becomes braver and more determined to write her novel and be kinder to others. She also finds out what true heartache is like, especially at the story's climax, when she learns that Olive is truly gone, and there is nothing she can do to help that. Martha wants Olive to know the ocean, so she brings her some salt water inside an empty jar of baby food to give to Olive's mother. But when she goes to Olive's house after her trip, she finds that Mrs. Barstow has moved away. The only witness to Martha's tribute is their neighbor, who recalls Olive's loneliness with great clarity. It comes to show that, while giving gifts to the dead can help us to heal and become better people, it is best to give everyone the respect they deserve while they are still alive. We should treat everyone kindly, no matter what others say. And we should embrace our dreams and share them with others, because you never know when you'll find someone who has the same dream as you.
