Goodbye, French Fry

By: Rin-rin Yu

Published by Penguin Group, 2026-02-17

A sparkling debut novel featuring a Chinese American girl doing her best to stay true to herself in a world that often judges Some days Ping-Ping feels like she just can’t win. She was born in the US, so it’s frustrating when people are surprised by how American she is, but her Chinese relatives feel she’s not Chinese enough. But the things bugging her the most lately are her classmate Lee Beaumont, who has taken to calling her “French Fry” because of the tofu sticks she eats at lunch, and the possibility that her family will have to relocate to Kenya for her father’s UN job. Of all the things Ping-Ping loves, her home and best friend are at the top of the list, and she’d hate to have to leave them. What’s a girl to do when she can’t be in as much control as she’d like to be? Well, good thing Ping-Ping is a wiz at taekwondo—she’s learning how to kick her frustrations away, and there’s almost nothing she can’t master if she puts her mind to it. Rin-rin Yu has written a warm and funny family story that will have kids rooting for Ping-Ping—a girl who is ready to kick all the assumptions made about her aside!