Adolescence can be a tangled web, fraught with body changes and new desires — the world outside moving fast and slow at the same time.
I think of the Carol Ann Duffy poem “In Mrs Tilscher’s Class,” which recounts a child’s gradual loss of innocence. It starts happily enough. Then the speaker learns about sexual reproduction (“a rough boy told you how you were born”) and instantly becomes appalled by this adult business that exists outside the walls of the classroom. The closing image is a thunderstorm splitting open a once peaceful sky. There’s no turning back now.
Two new verse novels add to the conversation about growing up, offering nuanced takes on love, friendship and grief.
“Who invented love, anyway?/Had to be a girl, right?” With this, we meet 13-year-old Elio Solis, the wide-eyed, hormone-crazed protagonist of Aida Salazar’s savagely funny and deeply human ULTRAVIOLET (Scholastic, 304 pp., $18.99, ages 10 and up). When Elio’s crush, Camelia, glances at him from the “artsy-fartsy lunch table” as he walks into the cafeteria, he freezes in his tracks, “completely helado.” Camelia’s “too-good-to-be-true/sparkle-on-the-teeth” smile cuts through Elio’s mushy heart like a knife.
The book earns its title. Each poem bursts with energy, expanding the rich territory of fiction about middle school boys grappling with newfound romantic feelings. “Grown, eighth-grade stuff,” as Elio puts it.
As his relationship with Camelia develops, Elio’s world becomes smaller and more illuminated. “Beyond the spectrum” colors blow up his vision. Between their public displays of affection — “spit swapping” while drinking a chocolate shake through the same straw — Elio plays Camelia’s favorite songs on the piano. She sends him manga drawings. Noting their cosmic connection, their science teacher, Mr. Trejo, posits that Elio and Camelia may be “soul companions,” two energies that have crossed paths before.
But at home, where Elio lives with his mom, dad and two ornery younger sisters, Elio is of two minds: He attends lucha libre matches and backyard cockfights with Pops, who tells him to “man up,” and has heart-to-hearts with Moms about the meanings of feminism and toxic masculinity. (Salazar weaves sharp, witty social commentary into the narrative without being didactic.)
One mind prevails when Elio and Pops — together with Elio’s friends and their dads — join a community group called Brothers Rising. They engage in rituals and spiritual cleansings, calling on ancient spirits to guide and strengthen them on their journey to, and through, manhood. “We are now men, Elio. Real men,” his friend Paco says after the ceremony. Endearing bits like this keep the pages turning.
In time, heartbreak strikes. What began as a new and exciting “coupling up” — kaleidoscopic and brimming with possibility — is shattered by a betrayal. Salazar, whose son helped inspire the novel, depicts Elio’s emotional trajectory with grace and empathy.
“Ultraviolet” beautifully captures the essence of what it means to be a boy trying to make himself into a good man.
In MID-AIR (Atheneum, 320 pp., $17.99, ages 10 and up), the Newbery honoree Alicia D. Williams delivers tenderhearted verse that leaps off the page. Isaiah, Darius and Drew, all Black eighth graders, are best buds and adrenaline junkies. They skateboard, ride bikes and back-flip off trees. They dominate in schoolyard four square, “bending air, earth, & water.” Everything revolves around their shared pursuit of breaking Guinness World Records. In each challenge, they encourage one another to be chill, to “be like water.”
At the center of the novel is Isaiah — sensitive, thoughtful and the most cautious of the three. His real passion is music: rock, metal, hard-core punk; AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Bad Brains, Fishbone. Other kids call him “White Boy” and “Metal Head.” Isaiah takes their comments in stride, knowing that with true friends close by he doesn’t need to hide who he is.
Everything changes when an attempt to beat the record for longest wheelie ends in a fatal accident. The two surviving boys sink into grief, united by a heaviness they’ve never before experienced. At the funeral, they struggle to keep it together.
“This all feels —/Weird, I say, finishing his sentence. Like it’s a —/Bad dream. He finishes mine.”
After the tragedy, uncertainty looms at every turn. Graduation comes and goes, and summer isn’t shaping up to be as epic as it could have been. When the boys have a falling-out, Isaiah makes it his mission to try to repair what was broken by their friend’s death.
Williams does a wonderful job of letting the story be driven by emotional beats — Isaiah’s anger, for example, and his penchant for using humor to cope. And she tackles issues of racism, self-acceptance and identity with heart and compassion. Danica Novgorodoff’s ink and watercolor illustrations add depth and relatability.
As I neared the end, having come to love these characters and their visions of greatness, I remembered a line from early in the book that vividly encapsulates the journey we’re all on: “To the bloody nose & the slippery path.” A fitting and deliciously lyrical reminder that we can choose resilience in the face of trials, hope in the wake of despair.
