Amy Kramer's family moves to Taiwan where her parents plan to work as missionaries. Amy and her brother attend the international school where Amy meets her "peanut butter friends," people she can understand and relate to. But she would also like to make "chop suey friends" with the Chinese girls in her neighborhood and perhaps bring them over to the church. This proves difficult since Amy only knows a handful of words in Chinese and the only seem to want to call her names like "a-tok-a" or "big-nose." She finds herself relying more on her peanut butter friends, especially Jessica, a popular but bossy girl who convinces the girls to avoid Mickey, a Chinese student at the school. Amy learns she's been afraid of everything different in Taiwan that she hasn't given herself the chance to enjoy it, and that perhaps being a good missionary isn't so much the goal as being a good Christian.