With Chinese New Year (aka Lunar New Year) approaching, I thought it would be fun to share some books we love that teach Chinese culture. To clarify, these books are all in English (many of them teach Chinese words, but they are all primarily in English). We’ve been collecting them since before we were matched with Nova and our collection continues to grow. I’ll go into detail below on Nova’s top favorites. Some are above her age level or we haven’t had a chance to get to yet.
Moon Festival Wishes Nova’s current favorite. A great book for learning about Chinese moon festival and the legend behind it. Nova is obsessed with “the lady who lives in the moon”.
My First Chinese New Year A beautifully illustrated book that shows how families celebrate Chinese New Year. We especially love that there are instructions to make some Chinese New Year decorations in this book.
Ruby’s Chinese New Year This on is for sure above Nova’s level (too many words, too long) but will be great in another year or two. It’s really well done and beautiful.
Bringing In The New Year We’re on our second copy of this since Nova destroyed one last year haha. We love all Grace Lin books and collect them. This book is perfect for a toddler.
Kite Flying A story about a family making kites together. We’ve read this one a lot. At the end of the book it shows the meanings of all the Chinese kites, which is so cool. I definitely want to *try* to make a kite from scratch with Nova soon.
I hope this post is helpful for some who have (or are planning to) adopt from China OR just want to expose your children to Chinese culture. If you have other books your children have enjoyed I’d love to hear (DM me on Instagram!)
One more note! The dinosaur book I bought in China at the airport and even though it has zero english words in it Nova LOVES to play with it because it’s kind of a matching game. I will definitely buy more books like this if I have a chance when we are in China next I think it’s very special. Out of everything we bought for a souvenir in China it’s the thing she loves and plays with the most.
