Lunar New Year is a spring festival with origins thousands of years old. It is celebrated with traditions, rest, and a home cooked feast enjoyed with family.
In this post, I will share books and activities that our Chinese-American family uses to learn about and celebrate Lunar New Year.
Lunar New Year is sometimes called Chinese New Year, and they are the same holiday.
People are more often using Lunar New Year now since many other Asian countries (and people groups throughout the world) celebrate, and it is not an exclusively Chinese holiday.
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Favorite books for Lunar New Year:
The best kids books for Lunar New Year teach how to celebrate, traditions, recipes and the origins behind the holiday. We collect these books and bring them out each January-February to celebrate Lunar New Year.
- Bringing in the New Year
- I Am Golden
- Dumpling Soup
- Asian Adventures A-Z
- New Year
- My First Chinese New Year
- Alex’s Good Fortune
- Little Dumplings
- Bee-Bim Bop!
- Eyes That Kiss in the Corners
- Let’s Go Yum Cha: A Dim Sum Adventure
- Lunar New Year (Celebrate the World)
Little Dumplings
This book is adorable. It highlights dumplings from countries all around the world with a lot of emphasis on Asian dumplings.
We make dumplings a lot during Lunar New Year (they are good luck) and this book is a cute addition for young children.
Link: Little Dumplings
Bringing in the New Year
This is one of the first books I recommend to teach a young child about Lunar New Year. It shows a lot of traditions families can do together to celebrate the new year.
Link: Bringing in the New Year (we also love Grace Lin’s book, Dim Sum for Everyone)
I Am Golden
Wow, wow, wow! Eva Chen did an incredible job with this book. I was crying reading it for the first time. It’s a beautiful book and a great way to introduce your child to Asian culture.
Link: I Am Golden
Asian Adventures A-Z
This is a cute ABC book that will introduce your child to bits of Asian culture like foods and cities.
Link: Asian Adventures A-Z
My First Chinese New Year
This is another favorite for learning basic traditions for Lunar New Year. It includes so many cute traditions like sweeping away the old year, making an altar to honor ancestors, getting a fresh haircut, and cooking a feast with family.
Link: My First Chinese New Year
Our top 10 favorite children’s Lunar New Year books:
I add a few books to our Lunar New Year collection each year. Here are my current favorites!
- Bringing in the New Year
- I Am Golden
- Bee-Bim Bop!
- Let’s Go Yum Cha: A Dim Sum Adventure
- Lunar New Year (Celebrate the World)
- My First Chinese New Year
- Asian Adventures A-Z
- Dumpling Soup
- Little Dumplings
- Eyes That Kiss in the Corners
Looking for more Lunar New Year activities?
- Make Play Dough Mooncakes
- Chinese New Year Paper Lantern Craft
- Free printables: Lunar New Year Bingo, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Word Search
- Host a Lunar New Year Party
Love these recommendations! We live in Vietnam where the Lunar New Year is also celebrated as the most important holiday of the year. I would love to add this book to the list to represent Vietnam’s culture and customs! This is Tet: Rhyming story about Lunar New Year in Vietnam (translated from Vietnamese) https://a.co/d/dqY3pzP