Review by Frank Plowright

Kayla Miller hasn’t revealed Olive takes guitar lessons in previous books, but that’s just the starting point for a busy book about Olive’s various activities.

Clash reintroduced a character from a previous book, but Miller generally avoids continuity. Crunch, though, returns to the idea of Olive being a member of the student council and her feelings of the school dress code being too strict. In keeping with a policy enabling any story featuring Olive to be read as someone’s first, there’s no need to have read Act to know what’s going on.

In addition to her student council activities Olive wants to enter a short film competition and she’s accompanying her friend Willow to Berry Scouts, a weekend outdoor activity session in the local park. As seen before, Willow’s not good at making new friends or speaking in public.

A welcome regular feature is Miller drawing Olive’s dreams. It must be a creative release for her from the discipline of busy panels covering long school days, and we see Olive dreaming about the monster film she’s going to make. Over four previous books the art has been packed, and attractive in portraying Olive and her pals, and this is no different.

Miller works slowly towards it, but the crunch of the title is Olive spreading herself too thin and not having the time to pursue all her activities. It’s making the movie that really captivates her, but other activities suffer, and eventually this impacts as Olive starts falling asleep at school.

Even more so than previously you’ll have to admire how smoothly Miller has Olive’s many activities connect, and an improvisational skill in seeing how one might work with another. There’s even nine pages available at the end to draw the movie Olive makes.

The extras are always thoughtful, and given how Olive was so stretched for time Miller supplies a instructions of how to make a list allocating time. Break is Olive’s next appearance.