Holiday reading list
Chinese New Year Picture Books Worth Buying
Six children's books that fit the Chinese New Year season — the zodiac origin, the contemporary family celebration, the spring-festival folktales, the Daoist parables. Picture books and one middle-grade novel.
Chinese New Year — Spring Festival, Chūnjié — is the time of year most American and European households actually buy books on Chinese folklore and Daoist tradition. The two books that belong on every list of this kind are The Great Race (the zodiac origin story) and Bringing in the New Year (the contemporary lived-experience picture book). Read together, they answer the two questions a curious 5-year-old asks: why is it the Year of the Rabbit? and what does our family actually do tonight?
But the season is wider than those two. Yeh-Shen is the Chinese Cinderella — older than the European version by nine centuries, and pointedly set during a spring festival. The Empty Pot and Lon Po Po are both rooted in the Chinese folktale tradition that gives Chinese New Year its narrative scaffolding. And Where the Mountain Meets the Moon — Grace Lin’s Newbery Honor novel — is the chapter-book equivalent for an 8–12 year old who has loved the picture books and is ready for something longer.
If you are buying one book for the season, get The Great Race. If you are building a small Chinese New Year shelf for a household with young children, add Bringing in the New Year (preschool) and The Empty Pot and Yeh-Shen (elementary). Older children also want Where the Mountain Meets the Moon — it is the book they will reread on their own all year, not just in the spring.
A note on translation: every book on this list is by a Chinese-American or Anglo-Chinese author or illustrator working in close engagement with the Chinese source tradition. None of these are tourist retellings.
- 1
The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac
Christopher Corr's brilliantly colourful picture-book retelling of the origin of the Chinese zodiac — the race the Jade Emperor held among the animals to decide the order of the calendar years. The single best zodiac-origin book in English for a child.
- 2
Bringing in the New Year
Grace Lin's bright picture book of a Chinese-American family preparing for and celebrating Chinese New Year — cleaning the house, hanging decorations, the family dinner, the lion dance, the firecrackers. The contemporary lived-experience companion to The Great Race.
- 3
Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China
The Chinese Cinderella — actually nine centuries older than the European version, recorded in a 9th-century Tang manuscript. Ai-Ling Louie retells the source faithfully and Ed Young illustrates in ink-and-pastel panels, six years before he won the Caldecott for Lon Po Po.
- 4
The Empty Pot
A traditional Chinese folktale, retold and illustrated by Demi in luminous gold and pastel. An aging emperor announces he will choose his successor by giving each child in the kingdom a single seed and asking them to bring back what they have grown in a year. Ping plants his and waters it faithfully, but nothing comes up. The story turns on what he does next.
- 5
Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China
Ed Young's Caldecott Medal-winning retelling of a Chinese folktale that is older and stranger than the European Red Riding Hood. Three sisters home alone meet a wolf at the door who claims to be their grandmother. Ink, pastel, and watercolour panels in the style of Chinese landscape painting.
- 6
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
A middle-grade novel that braids a dozen Chinese folktales into a single hero's journey. A girl named Minli leaves her village to find the Old Man of the Moon and ask him to change her family's fortune. Newbery Honor, beautifully illustrated by the author, and the best chapter-book entry on the Library list to Chinese folklore.
