My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Summary (from Goodreads)
Meet Olive. She’s optimistic and well-intentioned . . . and a magnet for mishaps. When Olive’s day goes from bad to worse, she wonders if her family and friends can love her in spite of her flaws.
My Review
Olive is for everyone. As an adult reading it brought back so clearly what it felt like to be a kid, and like Olive, I would make mistakes and get in a little trouble. I could also so easily relate to the adults in Olive’s life who get frustrated by the messes she creates. Reading about Olive was a good reminder of the commonalities in human experience and the importance of responding to our own and other’s emotions with love and understanding.
And this book does all of that important stuff while being cute, witty, and so entertaining. The illustrations are colorful and full of the fun and innocence of childhood.
My 8 year old and 5 year old LOVED this book. They have asked to read it everyday since we got it. Not only was it fun to read the story together, but the “Stop and Think” pages at the end gave us great opportunity to communicate, learn, and connect. Since reading the book together when one of us experiences some “thumps or lumps or bumps” I have been able to say, “Remember what we read about Olive? How did she feel after such-and-such happened?” Or “How did Olive fix the mistake she made?” Or “How did her family feel?” It has given us a non-threatening, child-friendly, and loving vocabulary to talk about the mistakes and problems that come up in our family life.
Olive Ewe’s story is worth owning and reading over and over, but those Stop and Think pages really make it an incredible educational tool. This is an ideal book for character lessons at school and the lesson plan and questions are already there for you at the end of the book. Olive would also make a great prompt for writing personal narratives, and for studying emotions and problem-solving.
If you have kids, work with kids, know any kids, or if you were once a kid, do yourself a favor and read Olive.
The Reader's Salon 