Ali Benjamin

Ali Benjamin’s debut Middle Grade book, The Thing About Jellyfish, is luminous. And that’s a terrible pun, I know, but truly this book glows with a subtle inner life, much like the jellyfish that float throughout it. The bones of the story are simple: our narrator Suzy and her best friend Franny drift apart as they enter middle school. Increasingly, Suzy feels isolated as the things that interest her—science facts and the world at large— [...]