Eleven-year-old narrator Suzy Swanson will win readers' hearts as she silently struggles to come to terms with the death of her former best friend, Franny Jackson.
The fact that Franny drowned while on her summer vacation makes no sense to Suzy. Franny had been a strong swimmer since she was five, so Suzy feels certain that an Irukandji jellyfish must be responsible for her friend's death. It's the only plausible explanation. In her scientific pursuit to prove this, she finds a reason to keep going, at the same time shifting from a "constant-talking" girl to a selective mute. Suzy toggles between her present--as a grieving seventh-grader at Eugene Field Memorial Middle School in Massachusetts--and the past: her memories of meeting Franny, becoming best friends, and then it all going terribly awry as Franny develops a crush on Dylan Parker and starts sitting with Aubrey and Mollie at lunch. Suzy is convinced that the Franny she remembers (not this new one with barrettes, "the right hair product" and "deadness" in her eyes) is in there somewhere, if she can only reawaken her. It is a year of loss for Suzy: the death of her parents' marriage, the death of her friendship with Franny and, finally, the death of Franny herself. It's how Suzy insulates herself from all this that drives the story.
In The Thing About Jellyfish, debut author Ali Benjamin shows readers that there are many ways to grieve, and, surrounded by people who love her, that Suzy will get to the other side of her complex emotions. Suzy's ability to articulate the tectonic shifts in her world will help readers get through theirs, too. --Jennifer M. Brown, former children's editor, Shelf Awareness