SOLVED. Late-80's MG sci fi book on a flooded planet where a musical prodigy is learning from a spiderlike alien! [s]

[Jessica]

I'm looking for a book I read in the late 1980's, when it was either new or newish, from what I remember. It was middle grade, and took place on a planet that had been colonized by Earth, and then the entire planet flooded. I believe this was a cyclical thing, the planet was covered in water for 200 years every 400 years or so, so the original explorers had no idea this would happen until after the colony was there. There were buildings that had been built preflood that were either abandoned or people only used the top levels, parking their boats in the "ground floor" rooms. The protagonist is 12 year old boy (or around that age) who is a musical prodigy, and is taking flute lessons from one of the native people, which is completely forbidden. The natives are spiders, about the size of a large dog, with long silky black fur. (Somehow this was not terrifying.) They all took on human names like "Sebastian" in honor of Johann Sebastian Bach, or the names of Earth philosophers they admired. They all (as I remember) were artists, musicians, philosophers, and the like. The boy's younger sister is blind, and she sometimes goes with him to his lessons, which take place in an abandoned mansion. The spiders love her and fuss over her, and one of them gives her a cube that looks like plain blue marble, but each side feels like something different: fur, water, sand, etc. She loses the cube or else it's taken from her, and that causes the conflict in the story. The spiders were believed to be primitive, and the cube indicates a level of technology greater than Earth's. I think there's discussion of whether they can coerce the spiders into helping them return to earth, or stop the flooding, or something along those lines.

Anyone? Anyone remember this? It haunts me! For at least a year I playacted that our street was flooded, and sat around in our old fishing boat in the back yard with my friends!

[Andria]

I think this is Sweetwater by Lawrence Yep.

[Jessica]

YES! Thank you! I read every Lawrence Yep book twice at this age!

[Jessica]

So apparently I just opened up a new thread and tried to find this book AGAIN.

I'm so sorry, guys! My brain, she crazy.

[Kris]

No worries. It isn't easy to find one's old threads. Goodreads only added the "My Group Topics" and "My Group Comments" links on the group homepage around 2019 -- only on the full Desktop Website and Mobile Website (not the App).

[Jessica]

Ah! Good to know!!!