"Olive's Ocean" by Kevin Henkes

Martha Boyle had never personally known twelve-year-old Olive Barstow before she was hit by a car while riding her bicycle. In fact, the shy and mysterious Olive had only been in Martha’s class a few short months before her death. When Olive’s mother unexpectedly appears at Martha’s door and gives her a journal entry written by her daughter, Martha is shocked to discover that she had much in common with her late classmate.

“I hope I get to know Martha Boyle next year (or this summer). I hope that we can be friends. That is my biggest hope. She is the nicest person in my whole entire class,” Olive’s journal reads. Martha is haunted by the journal entry throughout the remainder of her summer vacation, wondering what she had done to spark Olive’s desire to be friends. Her family trip to visit her grandmother in Cape Cod does not ease her grief, as she realizes how the two of them share a love for the sea. Martha’s favorite place in the world is her grandmother’s house on the Cape, while Olive wrote that would love to visit and live by the ocean one day. Most of all, Martha feels badly that Olive will never be able to fulfill the hopes and dreams described in her journal entry.

How much of an impact would the death of a distant classmate have on your life? Olive’s unfulfilled aspirations of seeing the ocean and becoming a writer cause Martha to realize how valuable life is, and that it can easily be taken away in an instant. For these reasons, I believe that Martha symbolically becomes the living version of Olive. With similar dreams of becoming an author, the main character is motivated to live her life to the fullest and not be afraid to pursue her dreams. An example of this is her fear of telling her parents she wants to be a writer, thinking they will disapprove the idea. However, she feels better about her career decision after reading that Olive had the same aspirations, and is inspired to begin writing a novel about a girl named after Olive.