42 pages • 1 hour read
Lily LaMotte, Illustr. Ann XuMeasuring Up
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Jenna wants to trade lunches with Cici, something that had not happened until Cici started making her signature sandwich.
Cici remembers how she asked her mother to make American lunches and made a list of items for her to buy. Her signature sandwich has marshmallow fluff and peanut butter, and everyone at school likes it. Her parents find it odd though.
Chapter 6 Summary
Flashing back to lunch at school, Jenna suggests trading desserts too. Cici reluctantly agrees, giving her friend A-má’s pineapple cake. It makes her think about how she needs money to buy the plane ticket. Cici’s friends suggest different ideas, and finally, Cici sees a sign advertising a kids’ cooking competition. She is torn, however, because she only cooks Vietnamese food. She decides to do it for her grandmother: The prize is $1000.
Later, as Cici and her mother pray to their ancestors, Cici asks her mother to sign the consent form so that she can enter the cooking competition. Cici promises to keep her grades up, and her mom signs the form. She immediately begins practicing by making dinner each night.
Chapter 7 Summary
On a Saturday two weeks later, Cici wears green for money and wealth and red for success as she goes to the first round of the cooking competition.
Cici worries as she sees Miranda, whose family owns a restaurant and who already has her own knives and chef’s hat.
The Platinum Jr. Chef competition begins. The owner of the store hosting the competition, Mr. Grant, introduces himself and the other two judges, Ms. Kindling and Mr. Bonze. He lays out the rules, explaining that every week the competitors will have to use a key ingredient and create a dish. One team every week will be eliminated.
Cici ends up on a team with Miranda. During the first week, the key ingredient is rice. Cici is excited, but Miranda says: “We can’t win making Chinese food” (50). Cici corrects her and tells her that she is Taiwanese. Miranda insists on making porcini risotto. When she explains that it’s rice cooked with mushrooms, broth, and cheese, Cici laughs because it sounds like “an Italian version of Mom’s muê. She’s making Taiwanese food” (51).
When Miranda tells her not to wash the rice, Cici feels like she didn’t know anything about rice after all.
Cici feels like their dish smells like a “warm blanket on a cold, rainy day” (55). Other teams have made Thai green curry, citrus rice salad, red beans and rice, rice pudding, and frittatas.
The judges compliment their dish, saying that the rice is cooked perfectly, making Miranda gloat. Cici tries to remember that she’s doing this for her family, even if she has to put up with Miranda’s rudeness.
The Thai curry team goes home. Miranda says it’s good that they didn’t make “your Thai food,” forcing Cici to correct her again and tell her that she’s Taiwanese (59). It does make her feel like it’s good they didn’t make Asian food.
Chapter 8 Summary
At school, other kids tease Cici by saying that she can’t make Asian food. Her friends try to defend her, saying that she makes American food, but Cici feels unheard.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
This section introduces the cooking contest, the means by which Cici will achieve her goal of bringing A-má to the United States. It is through this competition that Cici will also find her own identity after immigrating to America. At this point in the novel, Cici is beginning to lean toward fitting in, bringing American lunches coveted by her peers. Likewise, in the first round of the competition, Miranda makes her question what she already knows about cooking. Miranda suggests that Taiwanese food isn’t “sophisticated,” which makes Cici muse: “I thought I knew rice, but I’m wrong” (53). In questioning the cooking traditions she learned from A-má, Cici is thrown into limbo. She will have to find her way back to using Taiwanese food, which she will ultimately do in the final round of the competition.
This section also explores the motif of family traditions and customs. Cici and her mother pray to their ancestors, and Cici chooses symbolic colors to wear to the first round of the competition. Cici wants to participate in her family’s customs. Her belief in lucky colors is likely another influence of A-má’s, who has lucky numbers. Cici will later learn that her friends also have their own customs, making her feel more similar to them than she did initially. Currently, she keeps her traditions private.
Cici struggles with navigating her identity as a Taiwanese immigrant and new American. Her friends defend her against bullies, but ignore Cici’s Taiwanese identity: “Cici isn’t cooking Chinese. She cooks American. So there” (64). For Cici’s friends, American food is what is familiar, and they have long been taught the notion of an American melting pot. The melting pot is a metaphor, where something is compared to something else without using “like” or “as.” In this case, it is a metaphor for assimilation, one that, in the novel, means the erasure of Cici’s culture, with each culture in the pot losing its signature flavor. Cici is proud to be Taiwanese, but she quickly begins to believe that her friends won’t understand. Additionally, Cici has to repeatedly correct Miranda and tell her that she is Taiwanese. Miranda’s comments show how Americans often view Asian immigrants as a monolith rather than as a mix of individual nations and cultures.
Through Miranda’s family, the graphic novel explores Parental Expectations and Pressures. Miranda’s family wants her to run the family restaurant. The fact that Miranda has her own equipment suggests that she has spent a lot of time working there in preparation for the competition. Cici will eventually learn that this is not what Miranda wants, showing how difficult it can be for someone to tell their parent that they don’t want to follow in their footsteps.
