Kaya of the Ocean

Huang explores one anxious tween’s relationship with the sea and her ancestry in this fantastical debut. Chinese and Taiwanese American 13-year-old Kaya Song, who lives in the Hawaiian surf town of Lihiwai, grapples with hydrophobia following multiple near drownings. Her fear also exacerbates her “never-ending anxiety,” which she tries to alleviate via scratching (“I wore my hair down and pulled on a long‑sleeve top to hide the new scratches I had anxiously scraped into my skin”). But when her best friends, native Hawaiian Iolana and blond-haired Naomi, pull Kaya away from her beloved books and persuade her to go surfing, Kaya inexplicably saves someone from drowning. This becomes the first of many strange new interactions with the water. Kaya keeps her worsening anxiety and recent development with the ocean hidden from her parents, but when her aunt and cousin visit from N.Y.C. for “Christmas in Hawaii,” Kaya learns about the water goddess Mazu and her connection to Kaya’s family history. While the premise is intriguing, the integration of fantastical elements and flashbacks relating the Song family history throughout Kaya’s more grounded challenges managing her anxiety is somewhat clumsy. Ages 8–12. Agents: Laura Cameron and Amanda Orozco, Trans- atlantic Literary. (Jan.)