This book is recommended for primary students. This book depicts a family as they celebrate the Chinese new year and a number of the traditions behind it. In my future classroom, this book and others could be used together to talk about different new year traditions and use it as a launch pad for talking about each student's new years celebrations. ( )

This is a great book for young readers, to introduce them to a different culture. The art helps to tell the story, and it is very colorful, which can fold the reader's attention. It is told from a child's perspective, which makes it easy for a young reader to follow. It is a great book to read in a primary classroom to help the students see different celebrations from a culture that may be different from their own. ( )

https://www.scribd.com/document/513248764/Chinese-New-Year-Guided-Reader ( )

I liked this book for two reasons. First, I think that the illustrations definitely enhances the story. For example, each page is filled with various colors, shapes, and patterns. When looking at the characters’ clothes and the Chinese New Year dragon, there are different colorful patterns that the book incorporated which make it fun for your eyes to flip through the pages. In addition, I loved how there are distinct physical characteristics that are portrayed in each of the Chinese characters. There are some characters with arched eyebrows while some with straight eyebrows; there are different eye sizes and shapes in each characters. The differentiation in characters’ physical appearances helped portray different personalities and characters for each person in the story. Secondly, I loved how this book incorporated the explanation of Chinese culture inside of a story. For example, this story was about a young girl who is really excited about celebrating the Chinese New Years. The story portrays what she does from the morning till the night time of the New Year's day. For instance, there is one scene where the girl wakes up early on the New Years and sweeps the house’s floor with her sister. Then she goes on explaining how this symbolizes sweeping away the bad luck from last year in Chinese traditions. I thought this book was very clear on explicitly explaining the Chinese traditions and culture through a story of a young girl. At the end, I liked how this book had the main message of how the Chinese culture has deep cultural traditions. ( )

The story follows one girl on the day of the Chinese New year and what she does while explaining the significance of each activity and of the objects involved in the celebration. This story would be useful for opening an exploration into what things other cultures regard as important, and explaining different perspectives.