Taiwanese – Mom Read It

Love & Resistance, by Kara H.L. Chen, (July 2023, Quill Tree Books), $19.99, ISBN: 9780063237834

Ages 13-17

Enough is enough for one Taiwanese-American teen who goes up against her school’s VIPs – with the help of some new friends. Olivia Chang, daughter of a military mom, is at her fourth school in seven years; she’s created rules for survival: stay anonymous. Embrace isolationism. Soon enough, she’ll be out of this little Ohio town and off to college, and leave this toxic mess behind. But she ends up on the In Crowd’s radar when she hears Mean Girl leader Mitzi Clarke make a racist comment about how certain students skew test results; Livvy speaks up, and war is declared, taking place on the social media battlefields that Mitzi and her minions dominate. Until NerdNet comes to the rescue: a quietly operating group of students who use their know-how to defend the bullied, they take up Livvy’s cause and bring her into the group. Empowered by their friendship, Livvy and NerdNet work together to upend the system: but Livvy may push too hard, go too far. Taking on the cult of social media and casual racism, Love & Resistance is reading teen readers will dive into. Livvy is a complicated heroine who risks becoming the type of bully she’s pushing back against, and her fellow NerdNet members have fully realized backstories, making them as realistic and likable as our heroine. The pace moves quickly and the book is compulsively readable, with much food for thought and discussion. Add this to your Fall purchases if you haven’t yet.

Measuring Up, by Lily LaMotte/Illustrated by Ann Xu, (Oct. 2020, Harper Alley), $12.99, ISBN: 9780062973863

Ages 8-13

Twelve-year old Cici is a Taiwanese girl whose parents are moving to Seattle. She’s not thrilled about leaving her life behind in Taiwan, especially her A-má, the grandmother that helped raise her. While she and A-má video chat, she misses her grandmother terribly and wishes she could bring her to the States. School is okay, but there are the inevitable comments from bullies; even her new friends tend to lump her in with “Chinese” as opposed to “Taiwanese”. Cici wants so much to bring A-má to Seattle to celebrate her 70th birthday, and a kids’ cooking contest offers her the perfect chance to do it: the grand prize will pay for A-má’s ticket! Cici has a few hurdles to overcome, though: her father’s insistence on prioritizing schoolwork over everything else, including cooking; the fact that she only knows how to cook Taiwanese food, and being intimidated by one of the other contestands, a girl named Miranda, whose family owns a popular restaurant and who was practically raised in kitchens. With some help from a friendly librarian (hi!) who introduces her to Julia Child, Cici begins finding her own “courage and conviction” – and that inspires her as she finds herself in her new country.

Cici navigates two worlds in Measuring Up: her Taiwanese world and her new, American world; neither of which make her entirely comfortable all the time. She struggles to “fit in” with her American friends, with new activities like sleepovers – that don’t sit so easily with her parents – and her discomfort with her friends seeing “how Taiwanese” her home life is. Learning to cook with Julia Child’s recipes, and Child’s willingness to not be perfect, gives her the confidence to step outside her comfort zone. Working with Miranda is intimidating at first, but with her newfound confidence, Cici begins trusting herself and finds her voice in the competition and with Miranda, too. It’s an exciting development to watch unfold across the pages, and the colorful artwork is eye-catching. Readers who enjoy slice-of-life, coming of age books like Shannon Hale’s Real Friends books, Victoria Jamieson’s All’s Faire in Middle School, Remy Lai’s Pie in the Sky will love Measuring Up. The New York Times has a great article on food-related novels for kids, too; it’s a great piece on how we connect food, family, and culture. and and Visit author Lily LaMotte’s webpage and find out more about the book, including a recipe from the story.

Tag: Taiwanese

Measuring Up brings together two worlds