By Carly Tagen-Dye
Meg Medina鈥檚 new middle grade novel, Graciela in the Abyss, opens with a young girl falling to her death into the depths of the sea.
This may seem like a startling start to a kids book. The latest novel from the bestselling author, out July 1 from Candlewick Press, follows Graciela, a sea ghost, and Jorge, a living boy. The unlikely pair are brought together to destroy an evil harpoon that has the power to kill underwater spirits.
鈥淚 knew I wanted it to be this story of friendship,鈥 Medina tells PEOPLE of the novel, which marks her first foray into fantasy. She began working on the book in 2010, but for years, couldn鈥檛 write past the first 50 pages.
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Then, 2020 happened. Medina鈥檚 mother had died years prior to the start of the pandemic, and the author found herself caring for her great-aunt, who was living in a nursing home.
鈥淒eath was everywhere,鈥 Medina explains. 鈥淣ot only death, but a particular loneliness in the nation. There was a feeling of regret everywhere.鈥 Though difficult, this period fueled Medina to jump back into her manuscript, where 鈥渆very character is pretty much dead,鈥 but a sense of hope lies in wait too.
鈥淚t’s mostly a novel about how we live, how we choose to be as people.鈥 Medina says. 鈥淚 needed those events, as hard as they were.鈥
Writing about overcoming hardship is a cornerstone of the Newberry Medalist鈥檚 books for young readers, from her acclaimed Merci Su谩rez series to her biographies of trailblazers like Sonia Sotomayor and Pura Belpr茅.
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鈥淭he underpinning of all of my work is you tell children the truth,鈥 Medina says. 鈥淲hen you sugarcoat things, when you hide things, kids smell a rat. I really like to tell children the beautiful things that happen between people, and also difficult things.鈥
In Graciela, the author quite literally balances the light with the dark. Medina threw herself into research about the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the book takes place, and learned how underwater species survived in deep waters.
鈥淕rowing up, especially as you’re moving into your teen years, it’s excruciating,鈥 Medina says. 鈥淵ou’re trying to figure out what your light is, you’re trying to figure out what makes you shine and how to move forward. And so the process of bioluminescence, being able to light yourself in the absence of sunlight, felt like the right symbol for all the things that the characters have to wrestle with in the novel.鈥
Storytelling was an essential part of Medina鈥檚 childhood in Queens, N.Y. She grew up hearing stories about her relatives鈥 lives in Cuba, prior to their immigration to the United States in the 1960s.
鈥淚t just built the notion of imagination, and the notion that there were all these different ways of living a life 鈥 that there was something that had happened before me that got me here,鈥 Medina says. As a child, she was conscious of the fact that there weren鈥檛 many Latin characters in the books she read, and considers the present day to be “a golden age of children’s literature.”
“In Latin writing, I want to continue to see narratives from the many, many countries,” she says. “Immigration is one major part of our shared history, but we have a whole range of people having many, many experiences. I’d like to see all of those stories told so that we see the richness and the complexity of what Latin culture looks like.”
But the author notes how important it is for kids to read beyond their own experiences too. As a young reader, she herself became drawn to stories where characters were 鈥渘othing like me,鈥 like the Nancy Drew series and the protagonists in Judy Blume novels.
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鈥淚 want kids to read widely and inclusively,鈥 Medina says of her own work. 鈥淚 think that’s how we piece together the whole human story.鈥 This ethos also fueled the author throughout her tenure as the National Ambassador of Young People鈥檚 Literature, a post which she left in 2024, and as a current member of the organization Authors Against Book Bans.
鈥淭he strongest position that we can be in with kids is to be in conversation with them 鈥 to [have] an open dialogue with them about what they’re thinking, about what they’re reading, about what they’re experiencing,鈥 Medina explains.
And though her latest release may look different from her previous work, Medina, a self-proclaimed 鈥渞estless writer,鈥 still invites her readers to ponder big ideas in Graciela too.
鈥淚 want them to think about how we treat each other,鈥 she says. 鈥淚 want them to really ask themselves, 鈥榃hat do we owe each other? How should we treat one another when we’re in a community?鈥 I have no answer for them. They have to come up with the answer.鈥滸raciela in the Abyss is now available, wherever books are sold.