Tween Fiction That Probes What It Means to Be a Boy Trying to Be a Man

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.