TITLE:  The Thing About Jellyfish

AUTHOR:  Ali Benjamin

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DESCRIPTION:

"After her best friend dies in a drowning accident, Suzy is convinced that the true cause of the tragedy must have been a rare jellyfish sting--things don't just happen for no reason. Retreating into a silent world of imagination, she crafts a plan to prove her theory--even if it means traveling the globe, alone. Suzy's achingly heartfelt journey explores life, death, the astonishing wonder of the universe...and the potential for love and hope right next door."

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REVIEW:

A well-written but sad book about loss and growing up, with a plethora of interesting facts about jellyfish.

My coworker (who has the best taste) recommended this book to me telling me it would make me cry (I appreciated the warning so I didn't end up reading it on desk). It absolutely made me cry. It also gave me that feeling that the best children's books do, that twelve-year-old feeling that's both joyful and painful. After reading it I immediately wanted to reread all of Sharon Creech's best stuff (but didn't have time because of school and stuff). 

I thought this novel was okay. I loved the fascinating facts about jellyfish as I am find them interesting and amazing. Suzy is obsessed with them after a school field trip and she begins to believe that they are the cause of her best friend’s death which happened while she was swimming. Suzy is consumed to find a reason for her death, to pinpoint why this unfortunate disaster occurred. Suzy’s world is filled with facts and information about jellyfish after this field trip and the more that she thinks about it, the more blame she casts on the jellyfish but she needs verification. There are flashbacks where we see the girl’s relationship for what is was, how they nurtured one another and then how things changed between them. I wondered about Suzy, I wondered if she just didn’t see the big picture or was she afraid of change or afraid of standing out. She confused me at times and I wondered if students felt the same way when they looked at her.

The author had a way with words; I really enjoyed reading this novel. I liked how the author used a variety of fonts in this novel. I noticed that this helped make the information stand out, it helped with the transitions in the reading and it made reading the novel smoother using this technique. There were different typeset that transitioned you into the different time periods that the story inhabited, unique lettering that Suzy used to take notes of her scientists, notebook notes and Mrs. Turton notes each had different typescript. It’s funny how you notice things like that when you’re read. It’s a novel about grief, about death and about friendship. 3.5 stars

I thought this novel was okay. I loved the fascinating facts about jellyfish as I am find them interesting and amazing. Suzy is obsessed with them after a school field trip and she begins to believe that they are the cause of her best friend’s death which happened while she was swimming. Suzy is consumed to find a reason for her death, to pinpoint why this unfortunate disaster occurred. Suzy’s world is filled with facts and information about jellyfish after this field trip and the more that she thinks about it, the more blame she casts on the jellyfish but she needs verification. There are flashbacks where we see the girl’s relationship for what is was, how they nurtured one another and then how things changed between them. I wondered about Suzy, I wondered if she just didn’t see the big picture or was she afraid of change or afraid of standing out. She confused me at times and I wondered if students felt the same way when they looked at her. The author had a way with words; I really enjoyed reading this novel. I liked how the author used a variety of fonts in this novel. I noticed that this helped make the information stand out, it helped with the transitions in the reading and it made reading the novel smoother using this technique. There were different typeset that transitioned you into the different time periods that the story inhabited, unique lettering that Suzy used to take notes of her scientists, notebook notes and Mrs. Turton notes each had different typescript. It’s funny how you notice things like that when you’re read. It’s a novel about grief, about death and about friendship. 3.5 stars

This book taught me so much about jellyfish. Those things are creepy. And, they’re taking over the world. Or, the oceans at least. This makes me glad that I don’t live by the ocean. Colorado has an excellent jellyfish buffer around it, so I don’t have to worry about getting stung to death by something I can barely see.

The Thing about Jellyfish is part science-story, part grief-story. Twelve-year-old Suzy is a natural-born scientist. When her friend, Franny, drowns at the beach one summer, Suzy refuses to believe that Franny’s death was something that “just happened.” She suspects that Franny was stung by a rare and deadly jellyfish, and she’s willing to travel to Australia on her own to prove her theory correct.

This is one of those middlegrade books that I wish had been around when I was a preteen. It beautifully mixes the stages of grief with science facts (two things that go together strangely well), and also tackles the difficult transition from elementary school to middle school. Suzy’s obsession with science has always made her an outcast. Her outcast status becomes even worse when she enters middle school, and her friends all start caring about popularity. No one wants to hang out with a nerd like Suzy. Suzy does not react well to this. She makes some regrettable decisions in an attempt to change her place in the school hierarchy.

“Sometimes you want things to change so badly, you can’t even stand to be in the same room with the way things actually are.” - The Thing about Jellyfish

Suzy is the driving force behind this story. She’s easy to root for because she’s struggling to be herself in a middle school world that doesn’t understand her. She’s also desperately clinging to her jellyfish theory because she doesn’t want her friend’s death to be something that “just happened.” Suzy’s life is depressing, but it never feels completely hopeless. Her journal entries are funny, and she has an amazingly supportive family.

This book is elegant. There is a lot going on in Suzy’s world, which could make the story feel muddled, but it never does. Everything flows together smoothly. It’s impressive. I can understand why this novel has gotten attention from award committees. The book is also ridiculously well-written. This is one of those novels where you can imagine every sentence being typed up in fancy font and plastered all over some hormonal teenager’s Tumblr page.

“A person doesn’t always know the difference between a new beginning and a forever sort of ending.” - The Thing about Jellyfish

 

“Maybe this is what happens when a person grows up. Maybe the space between you and the other people in your life grows so big you can stuff it full of all kinds of lies.” - The Thing about Jellyfish

Occasionally, I felt like the story got a little slow and heavy-handed. I know that this is a middlegrade book, and the author has to be obvious about certain things to get the point across to young readers, but sometimes I felt like the morals were a little too obvious. There were several times where I stopped reading and thought, Okay, everybody gets the point. Move on.

Overall, this is a well-crafted children’s book. It made my animal-loving (and animal-fearing) heart very happy.