We’re only three weeks into 2024, but I’m looking ahead to my favorite second New Year — Lunar New Year. I love Lunar New Year (LNY). It is the only Asian-y day kinda-sorta recognized in the Western world. No other Asian based holiday is remotely recognized in the US and other Western countries. We gotta claim our holiday and be proud.

Over the past few years, I’ve created a list of children’s book titles related to Lunar New Year. To help prepare for LNY I thought I’d share some of the titles early (several weeks before LNY) so you can pick them up at the library or order them ahead of LNY. The 2024 Lunar New Year date is Saturday, 10 February 2024.

In the list below I’ve included books from across several different ethnic backgrounds. LNY is celebrated differently depending on cultural backgrounds and regions. It is also called different names — Tết Nguyên Đán (‘Festival of the first day’), colloquially called Tết – Vietnamese, Chūn Jié (Chinese), and Seollal (Korean).

As always, this isn’t an exhaustive list and will focus mostly on children’s books because those are the titles I’ve collected over the past few years. I hope you find some new titles and enjoy learning more about Lunar New Year. If you want to learn more about LNY check out some of Fakequity’s previous LNY posts, especially this one with food pics.

I’ve linked many of the titles to Fakequity’s Bookshop.org affiliate store. Fakequity receives a small commission from the sales. The commissions are used to donate diverse books to public schools. If you choose to order elsewhere please order from POC owned bookstores and not the mega-retailer named after a river.

Children’s Books

Chinese New Year’s Colors, by Rich Lo is a concept book focused on colors. It now comes in a board book format and is perfect for baby’s first bilingual Chinese New Year book. I like bilingual books and this one is delightful.

Home for Chinese New Year, A Story Told in English and Chinese by Wei Jie and Xu Can is another fave for bilingual books. In this story a father working in the city in China returns home to spend Lunar New Year with his family, including his young boy.

Tomorrow Is New Year’s Day: Seollal, a Korean Celebration of the Lunar New Year by Aram Kim. A young schoolgirl shares Seollal with her classmates, including her hanbok outfit. Will her younger brother get into the fun of Seollal or be a downer on the special day?  

Golden Blooms by Y.T. Tran shows how Tet is celebrated, including showing foods such as the tray of togetherness, tray with five colorful fruits, and family celebrations. This is a good book for toddlers and preschoolers.

Dumpling Soup is not an exclusively lunar new year book, but I’m including it because it shares how new year’s is celebrated in a multicultural way in Hawai’i. And who doesn’t like a good soupy dumpling!

Nian Monster by Andrea Wang and Grumpy New Year by Katrina Moore both fill my need for stories with grumpiness and a little scare. Not everything is happy and festive during holidays. As a bonus Grumpy New Year has a few recipes in the back.

Early Chapter Book

Mindy Kim and the Lunar New Year Parade by Lyla Lee is an early chapter book series. Mindy takes on celebrating Seollal without her mom for the first time. The Mindy Kim series is a wonderful early chapter book series that can help to diversify reading for new independent readers.

Graphic Novel

Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang and illustrated by Leuyen Pham. Both authors are known for amazing works on their own, so combined this is a dream combo. I haven’t read this young adult graphic novel love story yet, but I’m excited and want to include it on this list in the hopes you will get to read it soon too. Here is a review of the book to get a sense of the book.

There are so many more fun books to share, but hopefully, these will give you a start. I hope you’ll gather some books to read and share with others – a great way to welcome the Year of the Dragon. I’ll sneak in one more LNY dragon book title – Dragon’s Hometown.

For my full list of Lunar New Year and other New Year celebrations books visit Fakequity’s Bookshop page and look for the Lunar New Year list.

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