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Topic: Chinese New Year

Festivals and Celebrations Topic

Best children’s books about festivals and celebrations

Let’s celebrate! Featuring fun picturebooks and fascinating non-fiction texts, this collection of the best children’s books about festivals and celebrations offers a colourful and insightful global journey. Learn about festivals from a range of cultures and traditions and extend your children’s understanding of important religious celebrations with this list of books for Early Years and Key Stage One classrooms, designed to bring the topic of festivals and celebrations to life.

Maisy’s Chinese New Year

Lucy Cousins

Picturebook

Maisy is celebrating one of the world’s biggest festivals: Chinese New Year! From hanging up lanterns to receiving lucky red packets and joining in the dragon dance at the parade, this bright and colourful storybook is a perfect introduction to the many joys of Chinese New Year.

Maisy’s friend Tiger is coming home especially for Chinese New Year! Once the house is tidy and the decorations are up, Maisy changes into her lovely red dress and throws a big party for all her friends. They have a delicious feast, tell stories, see the fireworks together and, on new year’s day, watch a spectacular parade – with an amazing dragon dance! Richly illustrated in Lucy Cousins’ vibrant and colourful style, this exciting and gently informative story from the multi-award-winning creator of Maisy is ideal for sharing the excitement of Chinese New Year with little ones.

We Love Festivals: Chinese New Year

Saviour Pirotta

Non-fiction

An ideal introduction to the celebration of Chinese New Year for children aged 4-7 in Foundation Stage and KS1 classes. This book describes how Chinese people prepare for New Year by cleaning their house and having their hair cut. It shows how people around the world scare the monster Nian away with fireworks and watch the dragon dance in the street.

Attractively designed, its simple text and wonderful full-colour photos make this an essential resource in every Early Years setting. ‘Did You Know?’ boxes highlight interesting and unusual facts about Chinese New Year to give further points for children and adults to discuss. And a chart enables them to work out what Chinese year they were born in.

Lunar New Year Around the World

Amanda Li & Angel Chang

Picturebook

‘Lunar New Year around the world’ is a brightly coloured delight. It explains how Lunar New Year is celebrated in different countries around the world in a really accessible way. The text on each page is brief and presented in different sections or boxes. The illustrations are very detailed and there is plenty to look at on each page. There are also a lot of activities mentioned in the book that children could easily do themselves, for example, making a paper lantern or writing a wish on a piece of paper. This book is great to share with any year group or would make a good assembly book.

I Love Chinese New Year

Eva Wong Nava & Li Xin

Picturebook

This picture book provides a beautifully illustrated introduction to Chinese New Year.

The night before the celebrations, Mai-Anne explains that the Lunar New Year is about to arrive and that her family enjoys a special set of traditions. Mai-Anne helps to clean and decorate the house and is excited when her grandmother (Nai Nai) arrives in time for the most important dinner of the year – fish for good luck, noodles for a long life, dumplings for blessings and nian gao for success. After dinner, Mai-Anne and Nai Nai settle down together and Nai Nai recounts the important story of the Great Race. Along with Mai-Anne, the reader learns about the story of the twelve animals who race to cross the river. Then Mai-Anne enjoys a special family Dragon Dance, eats sweet tangerines and wears a special red outfit for luck.

This is a lovely picture book to read at Chinese New Year but also all year round too as a book that celebrates family moments, bonds with grandparents and the joy of special traditions. The illustrations and text are both warm and celebratory in tone. It also features a non-fiction section on the final pages with more information about Chinese New Year and the dragon dance.

Winnie and Wilbur at Chinese New Year

Korky Paul & Valerie Thomas

Picturebook

When Winnie and Wilbur decide to celebrate Chinese New Year, the party is going with a swing. Family? Check! Friends? Check! Food? Check! Fun? Check! But just when Winnie waves her wand to make parade costumes for everyone, Wilbur goes missing. Oh no! Will Winnie find him before the first firework lights up the sky? The best-selling Winnie and Wilbur series has been delighting readers both young and old since 1987 and Winnie and Wilbur have become favourite characters in homes and schools all over the world.

Chinese New Year

Sharon Katz Cooper

Non-fiction

Chinese New Year is a time for new beginnings. Some people clean their homes from top to bottom or share meals with friends. Others pray, light fireworks or give each other gifts. Readers will discover how a shared holiday can have multiple traditions and be celebrated in all sorts of ways.

The Great Race

Anne Wilson & Dawn Casey

Picturebook

Which animal will win the race and get the first year of the Chinese calendar named after them? Race along with Rat, Monkey, Dragon, and their companions while discovering the origin of the Chinese Zodiac. This bright and colourful book includes intriguing notes about the Chinese calendar, the festivals, and the animal that rules each year.

Chinese New Year – Seasonal Booklist

Best Chinese New Year Books for Children

Whether you are joining the celebrations or exploring the customs and traditions of the Lunar New Year festival, we’ve got the best books to help.

A popular choice of story about Chinese New Year for EYFS and KS1 is I Love Chinese New Year by Eva Wong Nava and Li Xin, which provides an introduction to Chinese New Year traditions for one girl and her family -including the special food, decorations and exciting dragon dance. Another recommended option is Chloe’s Lunar New Year, which explores how Lunar New Year is celebrated in Taiwan and is a lovely story book detailing traditions including new shoes, good-luck oranges, red envelopes and tasty treats.

If you are looking for Chinese New Year children’s books that explore the story of the Chinese Zodiac, Christopher Corr’s The Great Race is a recommended picturebook exploring the traditional story of the great animal race, featuring wonderfully colourful spreads painted in an oriental folk style.

For a non-fiction children’s book that extends beyond China, try Lunar New Year Around the World, which our review panel described as ‘a brightly coloured delight’ containing information and activities to help extend children’s awareness of the global festival.

From firecrackers and fortune cookies to stories of the great animal race, browse this list of recommended children’s books about Chinese New Year to help you to bring the festival to life in the classroom…

The Runaway Wok

Sebastia Serra & Ying Chang Compestine

Picturebook

This story, which is a bit like Jack and the Beanstalk and the Gingerbread Man rolled into one, tells the story of a boy from a poor family celebrating Chinese New Year. The boy is sent to market for some food but much to his family’s disappointment he returns instead with a magic wok. When the wok runs away, little do the family know that it will soon bring back an enormous feast for their celebrations! We particularly like the beautiful and engaging illustrations brimming with detail and the repeated elements that make The Runaway Wok story easy to join in with.

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