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Lunar New Year Books for KidsReviewed and RecommendedThe Lunar New Year is a time of celebration, family, food, and kids! Here are some books written and illustrated by Asian Americans to share with your children this New Year’s season.
Dumpling
Soup
Sam
and the Lucky Money
The
Dancing Dragon A brightly illustrated book with all the colors and excitement of the new year, this is a great book for very young children, as young as 2. It tells the story, in rhyme, of preparing for Chinese new year and attending the new year’s parade in Chinatown. The best part about the book is that it unfolds, accordion style, to reveal a 6 page long parade dragon!
Colorful, paper cut-out illustrations appear to leap out of the page in this humorous version of how the twelve animals of the zodiac were chosen. See how the wily rat won the race, even though he was the smallest of the animals, and why the rat and the cat—once best friends—became sworn enemies. The writing is clean and the text moves quickly. This book is available in bilingual versions with English and Chinese, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, or Vietnamese.
Related Readings
By Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, AAV Contributing Editor A review of videos of multicultural stories and about Asian-American history and culture, including educational videos about the New Year.
Resources
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A delightful story about a (mostly)
Korean-American family in Hawaii celebrating the lunar New Year
with a huge family reunion, fireworks at midnight, and an Asian
American feast. Seven year old Marisa is finally old enough to
help the Yang family women make dumplings or mandoo, but
the dumplings she makes are a little lumpy and she worries about
them not being good enough for the family. Grandma to the rescue.
The family is enormous and multicultural, with Japanese, Chinese,
Hawaiian, and haole cousins, all playing side by side. The
food is mouthwatering and includes sushi, mochi-zuki,
kimchi, roast pork, boiled tripe, octopus, spicy seaweed, and
sticky new year’s cake. Many Asian American families will be able
to find themselves in this story of love, family, and food. At
least two Chinese American children I know (mine, ages 2 and 3)
have been inspired by this book to learn how to make
dumplings.
A wonderful story with a
socially conscious message that helps children realize the value
of all that they have. Sam is excited to receive his red envelopes
of money for Chinese New Year, until he goes to Chinatown with his
mother to spend it. They go into a vegetable stand, a bakery, a
toy store, and also see the fireworks and lion dance of the New
Year. He becomes angry when he finds he cannot buy very much with
four dollars. Then he meets a homeless Chinese man with no shoes
in the middle of winter, and he gives away his red envelopes so
that the man can at least buy some socks. The appearance of a
homeless person in Chinatown makes this book uniquely Asian
American, dealing with a theme not often found in children’s
books. Young children can easily relate to having cold hands and
cold feet in the wintertime. It also puts the value of the
much-treasured red envelopes into perspective. It opens up a
discussion for how lucky our children are to have family, home,
and basic necessities like socks and shoes. 
