Fourteen Ways of Looking at Jellyfish

With dozens of major awards between them, a revered poet and a versatile artist pool their mastery to sing the praises of an undersea wonder.



A graceful bundle of nerves three times as ancient as the dinosaurs, the jellyfish is no fish but a spineless invertebrate without brain, heart, blood, or bones. Inside glass tanks in crowded aquariums, jellies hold visitors rapt with their slow-motion water ballet. Most of the world’s nearly four thousand species emit an otherworldly light, glowing red, yellow, violet, or blue in the underwater dark. Fifty species boast deadly venom, including pink meanies with boa-like tentacles, box jellies with two-dozen eyes apiece, and deadliest of all, cubozoans the size of human thumbnails. Coretta Scott King Award–winning author Carole Boston Weatherford brings poetry and playfulness to natural science as she shares her fascination with a singular creature. Fourteen wildly divergent poems—by turns dramatic and serene—pulse with life. From spreads of shimmering bioluminescence to graphic panels, stylish artwork blends poetry with science and fact with folklore and myth to form the ideal introduction to the “immortal” and mysterious jellyfish.