Peanut Butter Friends in a Chop Suey World is a fictional story about Amy Kramer’s first months in Taiwan. The sixth-grader has moved there with her family so her parents can begin missionary work, and she is eager to make some real Chinese friends. When the neighbor girls just giggle when she tries to greet them in her halting Mandarin, she turns instead to her “peanut butter” friends at the Taichung American School – American or international kids who are more like her. When she tries to be kind to the class outcast, though, she finds herself shunned even at school and has to make some hard choices and remind herself of what she came to Taiwan for in the first place.
Reading level: age 9 to 12 years