A cursed harpoon that can kill sea ghosts brings together a blacksmith's son and a forlorn spirit in the wondrous and enthralling middle-grade novel Graciela in the Abyss.
One hundred years ago, the "ruthless" fisherman Fernando Gonzalo and the "pitiless" blacksmith Ignacio Leon forged a weapon to kill sea spirits. Fernando, bent on harvesting the spirits' pearl teeth, sailed off with the harpoon and never returned.
Now, Ignacio's great-grandson, Jorge Leon, has found the weapon. The boy's unkind parents want to use it, but Jorge won't let them harm the spirits. Instead, he steals the harpoon with the intent to destroy it. However, Fernando, now a vengeful ghost, attacks, reclaiming the weapon and plunging Jorge beneath the waves.
During the struggle, Amina, a specter of the sea, is stabbed by the terrible harpoon, terrifying her best friend Graciela Lima. But Graciela--after dying at 13 and waking to a world where she does not have her sister--refuses to lose Amina too. So, when the severely injured Amina gives Jorge the ability to breathe underwater and asks Graciela to help him find and destroy the harpoon, Graciela plans to abandon the "wretched" boy in the abyss. Yet as she witnesses Jorge's determination to help, Graciela reconsiders Amina's admonition to "think bigger than yourself."
The awe-inspiring characters in this mesmerizing folkloric story exude a dazzling defiance against unjust power. Jorge, who thinks himself worthless, finds the might to disobey his parents despite how "the blaze of the forge had long ago burned away any gentleness" in his father and how even stray cats feared his mother. Similarly, in Graciela's life, her Papá "had deemed swimming unladylike" yet still she swam. Also uniting the pair is how each creates "something beautiful from what the world discard[s]"--Jorge invents toys, Graciela refines sea glass--which brilliantly parallels how both change over their time together.
Newbery Medal winner and 2023-2024 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Meg Medina (Merci Suárez Changes Gears) uses hypnotic prose to conjure an oceanic realm teeming with wonders that speak to the interconnectedness of land and sea (Shell Musicians filling conches with "ocean sounds"; messages ferried in bottles; spirits stuck in driftwood, their "screaming mouths... frozen in the shapes of knotholes"). Anna and Elena Balbusso, who have together illustrated more than 50 titles, create enchanting mixed media art featuring diaphanous shapes and layers of texture. The Balbusso twins' illustrations are as inky as the deep's dark waters. Seemingly insurmountable odds ("Nothing ventures there without being consumed") and grief ("This was the curse of the living.... No one really knew how much time was left") bring suspense to a supernatural underwater tale as immersive, majestic, and alluring as the deep sea itself. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer
Shelf Talker: A sea spirit and a blacksmith's son must quash their differences and destroy a cursed harpoon in this mesmerizing, folkloric novel set against the majestic backdrop of the ocean's mysterious abyss.