The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin

I don't pick up a lot of middle grades fiction when I'm out and about browsing bookstores. I mostly prefer to stick with young adult and up. Every once in awhile though, a middle grades book will catch my eye. I heard some positive reviews of Ali Benjamin's The Thing About Jellyfish, so when I saw it sitting on a table of featured books at Barnes and Noble last month, I decided to pick it up. I was hoping that it would be a good fit for my classroom library once I finished it, so I started reading it a few weeks ago. Based on the cover design and summary on the back, I was expecting an emotional, sweet read. What I ended up getting was so much more brilliant.

The plot follows a seventh grader named Suzy Swanson who receives some tragic news right as the school year is about to begin: her best friend Franny Jackson has drowned in a terrible accident while on her summer vacation. Suzy is completely devastated. She stops talking and becomes obsessed with trying to figure out exactly what happened to her friend. She knows Franny was a strong swimmer, and is unable to accept that her drowning was a random accident; in her mind, there had to be a bigger reason behind it. After a field trip to an aquarium with her classmates, she settles on the idea that her friend must have been stung by a rare jellyfish, and begins researching the species in order to prove it.

As the story moves forward, it becomes clear that the friendship between Suzy and Franny was more complicated than readers were initially led to believe. The girls had been drifting further and further apart for months, some bullying was going on, and Suzy keeps alluding to a major, bad thing she did to Franny at the end of the last school year. Guilt and hurt feelings are fueling her jellyfish research, as well as a deep sense of loss for what she had shared with Franny back when they were inseparable little kids. The narration switches back and forth between Suzy's current life and her memories of Franny, with each memory revealing a little bit more of the story of their friendship, and what went wrong between them. The Thing About Jellyfish is a story about the finicky nature of childhood friendships, the ways we change as we grow up, and crushing weight of the grief that descends on us when we lose people that we love.

This book was truly, shockingly good. I was completely engaged from page one and I raced through it in just a few days. This would have been a one day read for me if I wasn't so busy with school things and I had some uninterrupted hours to devote to it. Part of the reason for this was the excellent pacing Ali Benjamin did an amazing job releasing little bits of information slowly to gradually build a picture of what was really going on between Suzy and Franny. Her narrative decisions in how to spread everything out kept me turning the pages, anxious to get a clear view of the situation. Another part of the reason I fell in love with this book was the language itself. The imagery it contains is emotional and poignant. Suzy's grief felt palpable, and the descriptions of her family and classmates felt genuine as well.

Suzy's character in particular deserves special mention, because this was one of the best unreliable narrators I've encountered in a middle grades novel. As Suzy tells her story, it becomes clear that her pain, guilt, immaturity, and quirky personality are skewing the narration. For the first few chapters, readers believe her to be an average kid grieving for her friend, but as time goes on, it becomes clear that Suzy doesn't see the world the same way other kids do. Her friendship with Franny deteriorated for reasons both understandable and unfair, and her perceptions of what exactly went wrong are not always accurate. Slowly, readers learn to dig a bit deeper into what she is saying, look more closely at what was actually happening in her life, and consider what her actions would look like to an outsider.

Another small aspect of the novel I enjoyed was the inclusion of a gay relationship. Suzy's older brother is gay and lives at his college with his boyfriend. There is no negativity or stress associated with this relationship in the story. It is a simple fact and everyone regards it as such. I think it's a wonderful thing for children's fiction to include this type of representation without making it a key plot point. It goes a long way towards normalizing what should already be considered normal.

The Thing About Jellyfish is a rare treasure in the world of middle grades fiction. It doesn't feel like it's "talking down" to young readers, it has a compelling plot, it and stirs genuine emotion as you read it. I think that both adults and kids will enjoy this novel, and I will definitely be recommending it to all sorts of readers. In fact, I have already started talking about it. After I finished my reading, I brought it into school and gave a little book talk to my eighth graders. Later on that night, one of my kids emailed me asking to borrow it. This student, who says she struggles to find books that she enjoys, read the whole thing in a few days and bought her own copy. If that's not proof of how special this book is, I don't know what else would be.


Challenge Tally
Finally in 2019: 39/6 Books Read - Complete!

Total Books Read in 2019: 61