The Thing About Jellyfish/Ali Benjamin: a major new voice for younger readers (for all readers)

When Jessica Shoffel speaks, I listen.

She's the sort of person who makes you feel seen. The sort who, as a Penguin publicist, didn't just oversee the campaigns of mega-watt writers like Laurie Halse Anderson and Jacquelyn Woodson, but also took time to read my novel Small Damages, to tell me how the story worked within her, and to create a glorious press release and campaign on its behalf. The sort who stood with me through a difficult time. The sort who found me alone at the Decatur, GA, book festival and included me in conversations, in a dinner, in a memorable hour with Tomie dePaulo. The sort who makes time in a hugely busy life to reach out to young people who have experienced loss, to run marathon races on behalf of medical research, and to talk to a dear family member, Kelsey, about what it is like to work among books. Jess is smart and gracious and kind and hard working. She is there. She is present. She is with you; she is for you. She is a rare kind of sisterhood.

And so when Jess wrote a few weeks ago to tell me about a book she had just read in her new role as Director of Publicity for Little Brown and Company's Books for Young Readers, when she said it was my kind of book, I didn't for one instant doubt her. Can I send it to you? she asked. Of course, I said.

And so it arrived. And so I have read it.

This book—this gorgeous, intelligent, moving, seamless, award-destined, Andrea Spooner edited book—is a debut middle grade novel by Ali Benjamin called The Thing About Jellyfish. Everything about this story enwraps, engages, enraptures. Its frizzy-haired, science-leaning, universe-scanning narrator who has lost her former best friend. Its obsession with the jellies that bloom incessantly within our seas, leave the big whales hungry, endanger us with their undying stings. Its child-hearted hopes and its big-minded mix of science and mystery. Its neat division into paper parts—purpose, hypothesis, straight through to conclusion. Its language—just the right bright, the right curious. (I could quote from every single line and prove that to you; Ali Benjamin never writes anything less than a wonderful sentence.) The science itself—impeccably (never intrusively) filtered into this story about friendship, family, school, and school teachers who care.

And then—watch—Diana Nyad appears. Diana Nyad, the endurance swimmer who refused to give up on her dream. The endurance swimmer who braved the countless jellyfish stings and made it to the other side. Symbol, hero, character. There she is, in this most exquisite book.

(For more on Diana and her relationship with my friend and agent Amy Rennert, read here. And look for Diana's much buzzed memoir, Find a Way, out in October).

In this summer of contemplation, this summer of weighing the odds, of wondering through the writing again, of maybe or maybe not trying again, of not knowing, it is a glorious thing to be reminded of what is possible with books. The thing about The Thing About is what says about what possible is.

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Live, Not Exist: The Diana Nyad Story

Two years, three weeks ago, I published this piece about Diana Nyad, the sixty-four-year-old swimmer who today successfully completed her swim from Cuba to Florida's Key West.

It took Nyad five tries. She never gave up. And as my agent, Amy Rennert, who is Diana's good friend, wrote earlier today, "Her accomplishment will be that much more satisfying after all of the earlier attempts.  What a story!  What an inspiration!" 

And so in honor of all of us who think we may be too old, or may be too unlucky, or may be not right, I repeat this story. This is how it looked two years ago. We know how it looks today.

Triumph.


"Think good positive thoughts for our friend Diana Nyad," my friend and agent Amy Rennert wrote in an email this past Monday.  "She's twelve hours into her historical swim from Havana to Key West.  About 48 hours to go."

Diana Nyad, I thought.  Diana Nyad?  (And then, the next thought:  48 hours to go?)  Just hours before I'd been reading the CNN story about this intrepid swimmer who was encouraging us all to look at right now as the most essential chapter of our lives.  "I'm almost 62 years old and I'm standing here at the prime of my life," she was quoted as saying.  "I think this is the prime.  When one reaches this age, you still have a body that's strong but now you have a better mind."

"How do you know Diana?" I emailed back, and soon Amy was explaining a friendship that has lasted some 30 years—its origins winding back to a super female athletes story Amy had long ago covered for Women's Sports magazine.  Diana Nyad, Amy said, was the greatest long-distance swimmer in the world.  She'd completed the 102.5 mile journey from Bimini to Florida years ago.  She'd once before attempted, in what proved to be tempestuous waters, the 100 miles from Cuba to Florida.  She'd circled Manhattan Island in world record time.  She was a Hall of Famer and (again) she was nearly 62 years old and now twelve hours into another historic swim.

Amy, meanwhile, was on a plane.  So were some two dozen other Diana Nyad fans, coming in from all across the country to cheer their heroine on.  "Just landed," Amy wrote to me, the next morning, 4:57 AM.

By the time Amy reached Diana, the history-making athlete had had to abandon her swim.  The water wasn't right.  A shoulder was nagging.  Amy sent me the news, but then she sent more word of the many faithful friends who were there when Diana's boat brought her in. 

Sometimes you don't quite get to where you'd wanted to go.  But let me ask you this:  Doesn't the heroism lie in the trying?  In getting back into that water after so many years, in re-doing the math on prime?  This post, then, is a celebration of Diana, photographed in the first shot by Christi Barli.  It's a celebration, too, of Amy Rennert (pictured in the second shot), who is always there for her friends. 

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