Name: Measuring Up
ISBN: 9780062973863

Lily Lamotte

"A beautiful story about food, family, and finding your place in the world." --Gene Luen Yang, author of American Born Chinese and Dragon Hoops "A delicious and heartwarming exploration of identity by a young immigrant trying to find her place in multiple cultures." --Remy Lai, author of Pie in the Sky and Fly on the Wall Twelve-year-old Cici has just moved from Taiwan to Seattle, and the only thing she wants more than to fit in at her new school is to celebrate her grandmother, A-má's, seventieth birthday together. Since she can't go to A-má, Cici cooks up a plan to bring A-má to her by winning the grand prize in a kids' cooking contest to pay for A-má's plane ticket! There's just one problem: Cici only knows how to cook Taiwanese food. And after her pickled cucumber debacle at lunch, she's determined to channel her inner Julia Child. Can Cici find a winning recipe to reunite with A-má, a way to fit in with her new friends, and somehow find herself too?

Measuring Up

Raven 

Cici desperately wants to see her grandmother again, but plane tickets from Taiwan to Seattle are expensive.  She decides to enter a cooking competition and use the winnings to fund her grandmother's trip.

Measuring Up is an enjoyable novel about a girl trying to live up to family expectations and at the same time, find where she fits in, even though she doesn't understand life in this country.  Cici is very relatable and easy to like as are the other characters.  This graphic novel includes many themes that are well developed throughout the book.  Overall, Measuring Up is an easy, fun graphic novel that teaches several lessons.

Lynn Braden

Cici desperately wants to see her grandmother again, but plane tickets from Taiwan to Seattle are expensive.  She decides to enter a cooking competition and use the winnings to fund her grandmother's trip.

Measuring Up is an enjoyable novel about a girl trying to live up to family expectations and at the same time, find where she fits in, even though she doesn't understand life in this country.  Cici is very relatable and easy to like as are the other characters.  This graphic novel includes many themes that are well developed throughout the book.  Overall, Measuring Up is an easy, fun graphic novel that teaches several lessons.

renee badenoch

This was a sweet and charming story about a Taiwanese girl, Cici, who enters a cooking competition in order to buy her beloved amà a plane ticket to America so they can celebrate her birthday. 

Measuring Up is mostly light, though it does deftly deal with racism, primarily in the form of micro-aggressions. It's a little heartbreaking to have to watch Cici have to deal with these more subtle forms of racism as a kid, but hopefully having books like this will a) expose white kids to harmful language without making poc have to explain things to them and b) give kids who are navigating microaggressions a lexicon for how to confront things if they want to. 

Mostly this book is just a love letter to cooking though! It's so fun to watch Cici in the Kitchen (with her family, friends, and on the cooking competition). The competition aspect of the book introduces kids to a lot of different food types, ingredients, and seasonings (cardamom plays a recurring role!). I loved when Cici starts watching DVDs of Julia Child and was surprised at how invested I was in Cici learning how to flip a potato pancake.

Jordan Bowman

Callie Anna

Swathi Seshadri

Lily LaMotte

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection Fall 2020 Kids Indie Next List “A beautiful story about food, family, and finding your place in the world.” —Gene Luen Yang, author of American Born Chinese and Dragon Hoops “A delicious and heartwarming exploration of identity by a young immigrant trying to find her place in multiple cultures.” —Remy Lai, author of Pie in the Sky and Fly on the Wall Twelve-year-old Cici has just moved from Taiwan to Seattle, and the only thing she wants more than to fit in at her new school is to celebrate her grandmother, A-má’s, seventieth birthday together. Since she can’t go to A-má, Cici cooks up a plan to bring A-má to her by winning the grand prize in a kids’ cooking contest to pay for A-má’s plane ticket! There’s just one problem: Cici only knows how to cook Taiwanese food. And after her pickled cucumber debacle at lunch, she’s determined to channel her inner Julia Child. Can Cici find a winning recipe to reunite with A-má, a way to fit in with her new friends, and somehow find herself too?

Measuring Up

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