STAY CONNECTED: Have the stories that matter most delivered every night to your email inbox. Subscribe to our daily local news wrap.

Surfer Maya Gabeira has book deal with children’s publisher

Feb 17, 2022 | 7:11 AM

NEW YORK (AP) — One of the world’s greatest big-wave surfers, Brazil’s Maya Gabeira, has embarked on a kid-friendly adventure.

The seven-time winner of the World Surf League Big Wave Award has a deal with Abrams Children’s Books for two picture stories and a young adult memoir. The first picture book, a fairy tale of “big waves and even bigger courage,” titled “Maya and the Beast” and illustrated by Ramona Kaulitzki, comes out Aug. 2.

“It’s been a dream of mine to share my story with children, in my own words, for a long time,” Gabeira said in a statement Thursday. “’Maya and the Beast’ is based on my own story: from a shy, asthmatic child to world record holder in the male-dominated sport of big wave surfing.”

Gabeira’s memoir, currently untitled, is scheduled for 2023. According to Abrams, the book will feature “as-yet-untold stories of the friendships, relationships, and personal challenges she encountered on the road to becoming one of surfing’s elite athletes.”