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She walked slowly, every plodding step a chore, anchored to the ground as if by some surplus of gravity.

Jacob's narration, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children


Olive Abroholos Elephanta is a female peculiar with the peculiarity of levitation.

Biography

Olive was lighter than air from the minute she was born, she came out of her mother and floated straight up to the ceiling- this caused her mother to faint from exhaustion and shock. Her ashamed parents were able to keep her peculiarity a secret until she was taken in by Miss Peregrine. When Olive was five years old, her father sent her to work at a boot-blacking factory. She considers her time there awful.

Olive mentions that her parents didn't love her enough to worry when she left home.

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

Olive was first seen approaching centaur-shaped bush where the other peculiar children's ball was stuck in its chest. The others then proceeded to tie a rope around her waist. She took off her shoes and began floating up toward the centaur's chest to try and retrieve the ball. She says she can't get it because it's stuck. Olive is one of the youngest members of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children and is seventy-five and a half. She appears on the front cover.

Hollow City

Olive joined the others and traveled to London. She guided them in the rowboats towards the end of their journey from Cainholm to the mainland. She tagged along with the whole group throughout the book and made a friend named Jessica at the train station, who was being evacuated from London due to air raid threats. At the end of the book, she was captured along with the other peculiars and does not escape with Jacob and Emma

Library of Souls

Along with the rest of Miss Peregrine's wards, excluding Jacob, Emma, and Fiona, Olive was imprisoned in Devil's Acre for the majority of the story. After being released, she helped free other peculiars and acted as a lookout for the wights that had run from them with her view of the sky. She had to be pulled back down after the wights started shooting at her. Later, she followed Addison into Abaton to save Jacob, Emma, and Miss Peregrine. She was part of the restoration efforts in Devil's Acre. At the end of the book, she arrived to help Jacob in America with the others.

A Map of Days

The Conference of the Birds

The Desolations of Devil's Acre

Description

Physical Appearance

In her photograph, Olive is pictured wearing an old white dress with three ruffles hanging over her small body. She is wearing white tights, wrinkling around the knees, and shiny black Mary Janes. Her long wavy hair is squeezed to the top of her head by a crown, too low on her forehead. She looks grumpy, although in the books she is mostly happy, optimistic and cheerful, like all of the peculiar children, Olive looks much younger than her actual age, and appears to be around seven years old.

In the graphic novel, Olive has wavy brown hair, and the dress she wore on the cover is now modernized. She also wears a black headband and brown leggings with lots of black stripes. During the talent show, each peculiar has a different stage name. Her stage name, according to the graphic novel, is The Levitating Girl.

Personality

Olive is a caring, cheerful, and optimistic girl. She is automatically nice to everyone, such as to the American clan leaders who she had no idea had once tried to buy Jacob and some of the others.

Despite being small, Olive is very brave. She has Emma agree to Bronwyn reeling her up to the sky to look for land in Hollow City, prepared to take the risk of the rope snapping or the wind catching her. Emma remarks that there is no arguing with Olive when she is stubborn about it. In two instances, when Horace and Emma ask the group "not to scare the young ones," Olive announces both times that she isn't scared. When the older ones are about to depart on the dangerous journey of finding Miss Hawksbill in order to get to the meeting place of the seven prophesied peculiars, Olive also asks to go, but the idea is shut down before she even finishes her sentence, causing her to look hurt.

Peculiarity

Olive is categorized as a zephyr elemental and can levitate. Unlike the other children in Miss Peregrine's home, Olive's peculiarity was with her the from moment she was born. According to her, she floated right up to the hospital ceiling and would have floated out the window if it had not been for the umbilical cord keeping her attached to her mother. She has to wear weighted shoes so she does not float away.

There are several instances when Olive starts floating even with her weighted shoes on, such as when she is upset or excited. She also buoys up when she walks when she hasn't "had proper meals," according to her. However, all-consuming laughter can make her levitation falter.

Relationships

Jacob Portman

Bronwyn Bruntley

Bronwyn feels especially responsible for the safety of Olive and Claire, as they are the youngest. Due to this sense of responsibility, Bronwyn usually objects to anything dangerous Olive suggests. Bronwyn often uses "Little Magpie" as a pet name for Olive. During their journey in the rowboats in Hollow City, Bronwyn throws her own safety aside out of concern for Olive who was in danger of floating away through the clouds.

Miss Peregrine

Olive is one of Miss Peregrine's wards. Olive calls her 'Miss P.' and has much faith in her, though the faith is a little shaken when Caul-as-Miss Peregrine-as-a bird-as a-fake kills Winnifred, Melina Manon's friendly and Miss Wren's ancient pigeon. However, upon finding that Caul did the killing, her faith was mostly restored.

The Peculiar Clown

The Peculiar Clown is one of the peculiars gathered at Miss Wren's hideout with Althea (now deceased) whose ability is cryokinesis. Olive didn't seem to enjoy the clown's harrassment or little faith in her strength, seen when he told the group that came to Wren's hideout that only the braver ones could come. In this, the clown is referencing to Olive as a 'not braver one' and she responds to this by claiming that she could face anything that the others could. However, later, when in the Wight's prison loop, she confesses to Jacob "with a sob" that the clown was thrown into the chasm near Wren's. Her act of sadness hints that she cared for and liked the Peculiar Clown despite his actions.

Trivia

  • Unlike most peculiars, Olive was born with her peculiarity.
  • Along with Claire, Olive is physically the youngest of Miss Peregrine's wards.
  • Her last name, Elephanta, is slightly ironic as Olive herself is lighter than air, while the world "Elephanta" resembles the word "Elephant". Subverted in that, like her middle name Abroholos, it refers to the strong southerly or southeasterly wind which blows on the Malabar coast of India during the months of September and October.
  • In the movie based on the first book, Olive was aged to a teenager and her peculiarity was swapped with Emma's: Olive manipulates fire while Emma has Olive's levitation.
  • According to Miss Peregrine's Museum of Wonders, Olive wrote Weight Loss the Peculiar Way, a modern work of "questionable merit."
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