Chinese New Year Wishes: Chinese Spring and Lantern Festival Celebration

by Jillian Lin, Shi Meng (Illustrator)

It is Hong's favorite time of the year.
His whole family celebrates.
It is the Chinese New Year. In this beautifully illustrated book, children aged 2 to 6 will follow Hong as he and his family prepare for and celebrate the Chinese New Year Festival. They will also enjoy reading the story behind the most important celebration in Chinese culture. More interesting facts and questions for discussion are included at the back of the book. Written in English and Chinese (simplified Chinese characters and Hanyu Pinyin romanization), Chinese New Year Wishes is perfect as an early reader or to read aloud.

Genres: Picture Books, China

32 pages, Paperback

Published January 3, 2019

Reviews

[La La · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful illustrations!

I loved everything about this book: the story, the illustrations, and the photographs of people celebrating Chinese New Year. The story tells why people celebrate the holiday, and how they celebrate it along with its origin story. The illustrations are delightful and I loved the inclusion of the photographs of children celebrating the New Year with their family at the end of the book!

[LittlePiscesReading · Rating 5 out of 5]

I chose this not as a parent, but as someone hoping to relearn the language. And for that purpose I'd endorse it. However, I read this on Kindle and the unfortunate effect of that is that the page size wouldn't change. It means you can't zoom in. I chose this book because it's bilingual. The inclusion of pīnyīn was a lovely surprise. Unfortunately, being unable to zoom in, I couldn't really read it. The tones were too small to make out. For example, while I should have immediately remembered that gold is jīn, I misread it as jìn.
I was ecstatic to find that there was more than just Hong. Cute as his story was. Shi Meng has rendered the cutest Nián I've ever seen. The art is just so, so lovely. The nonfiction section at the back was also a great inclusion.
This criticism isn't really lobbied at the book. This book specifically covers a Chinese child's celebration of the lunar new year. The politics of Chinese new year versus lunar new year is overcomplicated for a children's picture book and I know an English language audience mostly wouldn't recognise what the book is about if it was just referred to as the Spring Festival. I'm not saying it should have been included in the book. This review is not aimed at children, however, and I think it's important to remember that a lot of things get catalogued under Chinese New Year that aren't exclusively so.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. If I had a child to read it to, or give it to, of appropriate age, I would. I think it's incredibly useful for my purposes as well.

[taffykathiegmail.com · Rating 5 out of 5]

Describing the Chinese New Year to children

Short paragraphs to describe the celebration of Chinese New Year everyone will understand, Children can read and participate if they want in the celebration!

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is for young children, it tells all about the Chinese New Year Celebration. It is simple but the pictures are great and illustrations are very age appropriate. Everything is explained well and interesting. I love the Dragon story at the end.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like this book because the kid in the book's father takes him to the tower and he shakes a box of bamboo sticks and that means good luck.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute story and pretty illustrations! Happy Reading!

[Liz Hsu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for a small child. I can read the English and Popo reads the Mandarin. Our daughter enjoys it!

[Becca · Rating 3 out of 5]

The edition I read was a bilingual book. I would suggest this as a good basic title for learning about the holiday in simple language.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good explanation of Chinese new year.