It would be folly to call any season of childhood simple, but preadolescence entails some particularly sobering challenges. By then, if not before, the world has lost its mythological luster: The planet is no longer an impervious fortress, tended by stalwart grown-ups universally committed to the well-being of humankind. Even the most protected among us begin to discern that our support systems are vulnerable. And though vulnerability can foster compassion and community, it can just as easily fester into cruelty and greed.
Grasping the adult world’s more sinister dimensions is a grim but necessary business, for it carries with it a pointed question: Knowing what you know now, who will you choose to be?
In two new middle grade novels, GRACIELA IN THE ABYSS (Candlewick, 256 pp., $18.99, ages 10 and up), by the Newbery medalist Meg Medina, and BLOOD IN THE WATER (Scholastic, 272 pp., $18.99, ages 9 to 12), by the best-selling young adult author Tiffany D. Jackson, young female protagonists confront this dilemma under agonizing circumstances.
“Graciela in the Abyss,” Medina’s first work in the magical realist fantasy genre, is the more ambitious of the two novels in terms of scope and the world it renders. Anna and Elena Balbusso’s mesmeric illustrations accompany Medina’s graceful and gently eerie narrative about a sea ghost who must find purpose beyond the material contours of mortality.
The titular character is 13 when she falls from a cliff and drowns. One hundred years later, her spirit awakens in a panic, only to be soothed by a strange creature with “kelp-like hair” whose “shimmering tunic” resembles “Spanish moss hanging from a tree.”
This creature introduces herself as Amina and becomes Graciela’s spirit guide, a sort of death doula in reverse who greets bewildered spirits when they are born into ghosthood. The relationship between the two spirits deepens into sisterhood, yet the fulfillment of Amina’s aspiration — to one day join the Almas, a spirit coven “who guard all the secrets of the sea” — would require their separation, a fact Graciela refuses to countenance.
Meanwhile, on the shores of the living, Jorge Leon, son of the village blacksmith, discovers a harpoon forged by his avaricious great-grandfather that possesses the power to kill ghosts. His cruel, neglectful parents are eager to use it to enrich themselves, so Jorge steals it from them with the intention of rendering it useless. Despite his best efforts, the harpoon falls into dangerous hands.
Here, Jorge’s plotline intersects with Graciela’s, as (much to Graciela’s initial chagrin) the two must unite to find the harpoon and restore planetary equilibrium before it wreaks irreparable mayhem. The ensuing quest unfolds from their alternating perspectives.
Medina, a lyrical and tender storyteller, elegantly merges Graciela’s mortal desire for a “bigger” life with the lesson her spirit must absorb before achieving peace. “Think bigger than yourself,” Amina entreats her. “Everything in the realm depends on it.” Indeed, the novel’s drama turns on combating the disastrous ramifications of one individual’s vicious self-interest and barbarous power acquisition by cultivating a philosophy of interdependence and mutual care.
“Blood in the Water” takes place in a similarly nautical environment, although its milieu and its characters’ motivations differ.
A taut contemporary thriller, Jackson’s middle grade debut follows 12-year-old Kaylani McKinnon on a summer vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, where she’s been invited to stay with family friends, the Watsons, in a historically Black, moneyed community. Kaylani is reeling from her father’s recent conviction and incarceration for embezzlement; she is also certain that he is innocent, and is determined to uncover evidence that will secure his release.
But “#operationFREEDAD” is waylaid when a handsome, well-loved teenage boy dies under murky circumstances. While the death is initially deemed a shark attack (his body is found at the infamous “Jaws” bridge), Kaylani’s acumen and keen powers of observation lead her to suspect murder, so she teams up with the victim’s younger brother to investigate.
Jackson (who also makes horror films) has crafted a well-paced story. And Kaylani is an endearingly plucky, often funny narrator. Her Brooklyn upbringing has sharpened both her comebacks and her perceptive instincts. “Everyone here glows like they ate the sun for dinner,” she observes of the Vineyard’s affluent crowd.
This fresh-faced precocity chafes against the pretensions of her childhood friend London Watson. (In one scene, Kaylani encounters her in bed, “phone in hand, wearing pink under-eye patches” — presumably to soothe the wrinkles wrought by middle school agonies.)
The book is at its best when it dwells on Kaylani’s interactions with London, her sister and the rest of the teenage crowd. Efforts to weave the shark metaphor throughout Kaylani’s narration interrupt the story’s momentum and appear labored, despite the protagonist’s fear of the carnivorous sea creatures.
Far more evocative are Jackson’s gestures to the respectability politics that govern this wealthy community and to the ways in which anti-Black racism contorts the dynamics among Black people across socioeconomic classes. The book’s concluding revelations are satisfying, although one late-in-the-game heel turn flattens a previously compelling character.
Both Graciela and Kaylani suffer more than any child should, their rites of passage achieved through the harsh recognition of adult solipsism and corruption. In the aquatic hereafter and back in Brooklyn, one hopes they will embrace loftier journeys.
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