Elvis and Olive is a story of two girls who spend their summer spying on people in their own neighborhood.
It all started on their first day of summer and Natalie was already bored so she went out side to ride her bike around the block. While speeding down the street Natalie almost ran into someone, she recognizes this person as the girl she had seen down the street at the other bus stop. This girl introduces herself as Annie, and the next thing she says is, “I have a secret” .Natalie follows Annie to where she is taking her which ends up being underneath her deck. Next Annie tells Natalie how her mom died and at her funeral they put coins on her eyes because it was bad look to look in a dead person’s eye and she also shows Natalie the coins but still Natalie doesn’t believe one word of her story. Then Annie suggests that together they should spy on all the people in their neighborhood to find out what their secrets are. Natalie thought it was a bad idea but Annie convinced her to agree. So they gave themselves code spy names that were Elvis and Olive.
In the beginning of the story Natalie is a cautious and caring person and everything she does the first thing she does is thinks about the risk of the behavior. Annie was a demanding girl who didn’t really care what she did and didn’t think about any consequences.
So throughout the summer Natalie and Annie spent all their time spying on neighbors and they also became best friends. Every time they found out a secret they would write it on a note card and they would tack it to one the walls in their secret meeting place (under Annie’s deck). Finally all the walls are covered in secrets so Annie decides to find out what Natalie’s secret is. She actually ends up figuring out what it is and she spills it to the whole neighborhood at a block party. And to make it even worse she says it right in front on Natalie’s crush, Steven, and that was her big secret that she kept for so long. Natalie gets so angry that she told everyone Annie’s secret about her mom. Then all of a sudden their great friendship was gone. Also all the people in the neighborhood found out about the secrets Elvis and Olive wrote about them and some of them were not happy about them because Natalie and Annie changed them to be partly false.
Later that week Natalie is walking around the neighborhood and hears Annie’s Uncle’s girlfriend talking on the phone to her sister about how she wants Annie to leave and that Annie’s mom just ran away. That is when Natalie knew that everything Annie ever told her was a lie. But then later that night Annie came to Natalie’s window and told her how she was going to be up for adoption. Natalie felt so bad for her; they talked together all night and became friends again. Natalie would take more risk and Annie would watch what she said to people.
I would recommend this book for fifth to eighth graders because it shows how people can change because of how other people influence them.