King is a 12-year-old Black boy living in the bayou of Louisiana with his mom, dad, and the memories of his dead older brother, Khalid. Because he idolized Khalid, King always followed the advice his brother gave him, including dropping his friendship with Sandy, a white boy in King's class rumored to be gay and who King later outed. But now Khalid is gone, and Sandy has run away from his abusive, racist father. King helps him hide and brings him food; aware his feelings for Sandy are more than friendship. The driving force of this quiet, contemplative novel are King's complicated feelings about Khalid, who he believes, or imagines, will come back as a dragonfly. He also wants to believe his brother was perfect, but Khalid's advice about King's friendship with Sandy, even if it came from the desire to protect King, was hurtful, and wrong. In acknowledging the truth of this, and in his struggle to be seen and heard by his parents, King shines as his own singular self: young and gay, compassionate and sensitive, moving toward Black manhood on his own terms. A novel graced by exquisite writing beautifully captures the landscape of place and as well as deep feelings. (Ages 9-12)

A 2021 Coretta Scott King Honor Book!

Winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Young People's Literature!

Winner of the 2020 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry!

In a small but turbulent Louisiana town, one boy's grief takes him beyond the bayous of his backyard, to learn that there is no right way to be yourself.

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Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live down by the bayou in their small Louisiana town. Khalid still visits in dreams, and King must keep these secrets to himself as he watches grief transform his family.

It would be easier if King could talk with his best friend, Sandy Sanders. But just days before he died, Khalid told King to end their friendship, after overhearing a secret about Sandy-that he thinks he might be gay. "You don't want anyone to think you're gay too, do you?"

But when Sandy goes missing, sparking a town-wide search, and King finds his former best friend hiding in a tent in his backyard, he agrees to help Sandy escape from his abusive father, and the two begin an adventure as they build their own private paradise down by the bayou and among the dragonflies. As King's friendship with Sandy is reignited, he's forced to confront questions about himself and the reality of his brother's death.

The Thing About Jellyfish meets The Stars Beneath Our Feet in this story about loss, grief, and finding the courage to discover one's identity, from the author of Hurricane Child.