Goodbye, Fry: A new novel for high school students contains recognizable experiences
When Rin-rin Yu was growing up in Westchester County, New York, she said she wished there were more books with American-born Asian characters. So the 49-year-old Bethesda communications strategist finally decided to write a novel for middle-aged readers. Goodbye, Fry(Nancy Paulsen Books, February 2026) is about a fifth-grade girl, Ping-Ping. Like the main character in the book, Yu was born in the United States to Chinese parents. She often mispronounced her name and was given nicknames. With feedback from her daughter, Feilin, 14, and son, Zylan, 11, Yu says she made the book light-hearted and relatable. “I want readers to remember that it’s okay to just be a kid,” she says. “Sometimes the greatest achievements may not be the ones you notice right away, or they may not come in the form of an award. … Just like the way I confronted my bully who called me ‘french fries’ — and (Ping-Ping) does that in the book — it was a turning point that gave her confidence.”
Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters : A Bethesda writer on reading and AI
As a professor of linguistics at American University in Washington DC, Naomi Baron has been researching and writing about the impact of technology on the way people communicate for more than thirty years. The 79-year-old retired in 2018, but says that as a “public scientist” she feels compelled to write for a general audience about the problem of society’s growing dependence on artificial intelligence. In Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters (Stanford University Press, January 2026), Baron describes the many benefits of reading for yourself. “It motivates you to have faith in yourself and keep going,” she says. “If you stick with it, it can be worth it. That’s true of so many lessons in life.” The Bethesda author hopes her book will encourage people to think critically about the use of AI: “You make your own choices,” she says. “Big tech has no right or need to make them for you.”
More recent books by local authors
The mighty Macy (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, February 2026) by Chevy Chase resident Kwame Alexander
The colossal secret of rapeseed (Tilbury House Publishers, February 2026) by Rockville resident Karen Greenwald
Storm on the Capitol: An Oral History of January 6 (PublicAffairs, January 2026) by Bethesda resident Mary Clare Jalonick
Watch us fall(Simon & Schuster, December 2025) by Olney resident Christina Kovac
This will appear in the March/April 2026 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
