 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, welcome or welcome back to my channel. Today I'm going to be sharing seven picture books that talk about celebrations of Lunar New Year, which is coming up on February the 10th. Some of these are available on Kindle Unlimited, some of them I have physical copies of and we are going to chat about them. So I'm going to start off with the Kindle Unlimited titles. So these are books that if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription you can just borrow out and read whenever on a device. The first one is The Great Race, the story of the Chinese zodiac. This one is written by Ling and Eric Li and illustrated by Rachel Fu. It is a bilingual book so it features English, Chinese and Pinyin and Ling and Eric Li are both Chinese-American parents and they wanted to write some stories that were bilingual for their children, I believe. And this is the story of the Jade Emperor inviting the animals to The Great Race and it introduces the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac and some of their characteristics. It also talks about where they came in the race and how their characteristics impacted their position in the race. It is full of beautiful, vibrant, colourful illustrations. It's really fun to look at and a really great introduction for younger readers into the animals of the Chinese zodiac and the very simple text in here helps to convey the story. So it's not something that's overly long or complicated, it's pretty straightforward. The next one we have is our Lunar New Year, celebrating Lunar New Year in Asian communities. This one is by Yobi Qui which is part of their Asian holiday series. So this one actually goes through a variety of different celebrations, both Lunar New Year and other celebrations that happen around the same time in different Asian communities around the world. So it talks about the Chinese Spring Festival, the Vietnamese New Year or Tet, Korean New Year, Thai New Year, Indian New Year, so Diwali. It features very simple tech. Each celebration is introduced. It doesn't go into huge amounts of depths but it does allow for some comparison between the different celebrations if you wanted to go, if you wanted to look at how they're similar and how they're different. What I did like about this is every time it introduced a new celebration in the new Asian community, the illustration style changed. So there was very clear delineation between them so you could keep track of where we were and what we were exploring. There is an author's note at the back of the book that does include more information, so it's a little bit more information heavy, and there is a glossary and a reference list as well. So if you want to find more books about a particular celebration, you can. And I also read Chinese New Year Wishes. This one is by Gillian Lin and it is also in English Chinese opinion and was just really lovely. It has very simple text that sort of details what happens around Chinese New Year. It includes a story of how the story of the Chinese New Year came about and it also has a section that is more strictly an information text. So the first part is kind of a narrative nonfiction whereas the second part of the book features photos and more straightforward nonfiction facts. So this is a really interesting one if you want to borrow it out. And then we move into some of the physical picture books. So there is Tomorrow is New Year's Day by Aram Kim. This one celebrates Korean New Year and was absolutely lovely because it was the first time I'd read more specifically about Korean New Year. This is about a young girl who is sharing her cultural traditions with her class. So she and her family are going into her classroom because it is Lunar New Year and they are playing games and introducing traditional foods and other traditions that take place on Korean New Year. And it was just really lovely. And I quite like the first end papers actually feature paper folding instructions for how to make something that they reference within the text. And I thought that was a really cool addition to the end papers. That's a great way to make use of them. I loved that it covered traditional dress and food and games, things that kids are really interested in. And this one also features a really helpful glossary at the back of the book. And then there is I Love Chinese New Year. This one is by Eva Wong-Nava and illustrated by Jin Li. And this one focuses specifically on the Chinese celebrations of the Lunar New Year. It looks at the traditions that families have, the preparation that goes into preparing for the New Year. So what happens the week leading up to the New Year? It includes traditional foods. It includes another version of the story of the Chinese zodiac. It looks at the dragon dance, which I love. I love learning more about that all the time. And at its core, it's very much a celebration of family coming home together. It also includes that wonderful family element of family coming back together to celebrate the New Year as a family group. At the very back of the book, there are eight lucky facts about the Chinese New Year and there's also facts about the dragon dance. Another one that I really liked that is a mixture of Lunar New Year celebrations around the world was Lunar New Year around the world, celebrate the most colorful time of year by Mandali and Angel Cheng. And this is a gorgeous, vibrant colored book. And this looks at how different communities around the world celebrate the Lunar New Year and it includes countries and communities in China, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea, England, and the USA. Each place around the world gets a little paragraph, which is more of a narrative nonfiction story about a particular child and how they celebrate the Lunar New Year where they are. And then there is a section that is more strictly facts about that part of the world and the cultural celebrations that take place. I love that this one also includes the Chinese zodiac wheel, as well as some of the more recent years for the year of that particular animal. And I do like that it centres children and their celebrations as well. This is a really great one to actually use to talk about not just Lunar New Year, but also celebrations that children in the classroom might have that are different from their classmates and how their experience is really valid. So I really love something like this because it's simple and just gorgeous. And then a book that I have talked about on this channel before I do have a separate review for it is A Family Dragon, a Lunar New Year story by Rebecca Lim. This one is a recent release from Alan and Anwen here in Australia and it looks at how one family is preparing for and getting ready to celebrate the Lunar New Year. It is absolutely gorgeous. It centres family, culture, tradition, food. It is vibrant, colourful. It is absolutely just a stunning book that when you read it you just feel absolutely joyful and you just want to dive in and join in with this family. This is one of my favourite books by Rebecca Lim and I'm so grateful because this is what prompted me to start going investigating other books about Lunar New Year. I just thought of another book that I conclude that brings us up to the lucky eight picture books for this video. And this one I do own a physical copy of but it's already in my classroom in. And this is What Do You Do To Celebrate by Ashley Barton. She's actually done a series on different cultures where you actually look at communities around the world and the similarities and differences. And in this case What Do You Do To Celebrate is all about celebrations around the world and it does feature Chinese New Year in here. But it's also a great one because it is very inclusive of celebrations around the world that are not just Western celebrations but encompass everything. So this is another great one to pull out particularly if you're comparing celebrations from around the world. So I'm really excited to be taking these into the classroom this year and sharing them with my students and talking about all the different ways that we do celebrate things around the world. Particularly because I know I have quite a few students who do celebrate Lunar New Year. It's our second week back at school and it's a great way to incorporate their culture into our classroom. I will leave links to all of the books mentioned down below so if you want to find out more information you absolutely can. If you have any comments or questions feel free to leave them down below or if you have other book recommendations that look at celebrating other Lunar New Year or other cultural celebrations around the world feel free to let me know. If you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a dragon emoji down below for the year of the dragon. I hope wherever you are in the world you're staying safe and healthy. For those of you who celebrate Lunar New Year happy new year and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.