By Amy Chu
A Vietnamese American surfer girl and her grumpy one-eyed cat get pulled beneath the waves into a war between mermaid Sirens and sea serpents.
Trot is a Vietnamese American girl who would rather be surfing than doing almost anything else. One afternoon at the beach she is watching her grandfather, whose memory is slipping, and he wanders off before the family finds him. Grounded but desperate to get back in the water, she sneaks out with her cranky one-eyed cat, Cap'n Bill, and a huge wave drags them both down into an underwater kingdom. Down there the Sea Sirens are locked in a long war with the serpents of the deep and their frightening king. While Trot searches the ocean for her lost grandfather, she learns that the terrifying Serpent King is really just a lonely boy, and that she may be the one who can make peace between the two nations. It is a full-color graphic novel, loosely inspired by a hundred-year-old undersea Wizard of Oz.
It is a real graphic novel — full color, hundreds of panels — with a genuine quest, a war to end, and a mystery about who the enemy actually is, so a strong reader can drop into it and stay gone for a while. Trot carries it: brave, funny, quick in the water, and Vietnamese American, so a child gets a big adventure and, along the way, a family that may look like their own or one they are meeting for the first time. Under all the sea-monster action runs a quieter thread about her grandfather losing his memory, and it is handled with real tenderness.